Entering the season, it appeared that the Big Ten was going to be the best conference in the country. It had three consensus top-10 teams in the preseason, plus Michigan State, plus a slew of teams hanging around the borderline top-25 range. Through the first month of the season, that hasn’t changed — but the way the league has owned most of the non-Gonzaga and non-Kentucky/Duke headlines this season has been impressive.
The emergence of Minnesota and Northwestern in the past two weeks has given the league arguably 11 teams with legitimate NCAA tournament hopes as we enter 2021. And one of the teams that probably isn’t a tourney factor, Penn State, beat Virginia Tech by 20. The B1G has five teams in this week’s Power Rankings, with two or three teams knocking on the door. It has the Wooden Award favorite in Luka Garza. And playing games on Christmas Day made the conference the epicenter of college hoops this week.
The Big Ten is living up to the hype so far.