Big Ten Basketball: Way-too-early power rankings for 2021-22 season
By Adam Childs
Big Ten Basketball was widely considered the best conference in the country last year but crashed and burned in the NCAA Tournament. Had it not been for Michigan’s Elite Eight run, the conference wouldn’t have even made it to the second weekend.
Michigan and Illinois were both one seeds and Iowa and Ohio State were two seeds. Despite the lofty seeds, the Big Ten looked like a conference that was severely overrated. The Buckeyes were upset by Oral Roberts in the first round and Iowa and Illinois went down in the second round.
Maryland played well but got whipped in the second round, Rutgers blew a late lead to Houston who made the Final Four, Wisconsin got drilled by Baylor (but who didn’t) and Michigan State didn’t even make the first round.
For a conference that was supposed to be prepared for the tournament, it was a complete meltdown. It made for the 21st straight year that the Big Ten went without a national title.
How will the Big Ten bounce back will be interesting. The top still seems really good, but it appears there will be more mediocre teams and could be four really bad teams.
The conference will not be as good as it was this year, but could that actually help the top teams? Much was said that the Big Ten ended up beating each team up instead of preparing them. The conference was too good, but was that just an excuse for the disappointment of the tournament? It depends on who you ask.
What we do know is that the eyes will be back on the conference to end the national title drought, but will they have a team good enough to do that. It looks like they will, but who will that team be.
We still have a long time to find out, but before then we present our way-too-early Big Ten power rankings.