In the Jan. 29 poll, the Wisconsin Badgers were ranked as the No. 6 team in the country. Could a team that high fall out of the tournament in just five weeks?
Because of that, UW has lost seven of its last nine games. But people who think the Badgers will be blown out of the NCAA Tournament don’t have any proof of that.
Big Ten rivals Purdue and Illinois are the only other teams in the conference that Jerry Palm of CBS thinks will make the field. Wisconsin is still seen as a “lock” to make it.
UW only has two games left in the regular season. On Thursday, they play Rutgers at home, and on Sunday, they play Purdue on the road. After those games, they will play at least one game in the Big Ten Tournament. A loss to Rutgers would be bad for the record, but a home loss to a top three team in the country won’t hurt too much.
Wisconsin is a No. 6 seed and will play the winner of the play-in game.
Palm has the Badgers as the No. 6 seed, and they will play the 11th seed winner of the play-in game in Brooklyn. The winner of that game would play either Creighton or Vermont in the next round.
Palm’s 11th seeds, St. John’s, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah are all in the running for a spot. When he played for St. John’s last year, AJ Storr, the Badgers’ top scorer, made the all-Big East rookie team.
Today in USA Today, Wisconsin is a No. 7 seed and will play Florida Atlantic.
According to USA TODAY, Wisconsin is the No. 7 seed in the tournament and will play one of the tournament favorites, Florida Atlantic. The Owls made it all the way to the Final Four and were just one basket away from winning the national title. If that game goes off, the winner gets either No. 2 Iowa State or No. 15 South Dakota State.
The head coach of Iowa State is T.J. Otzelberger, who is from Milwaukee. He led the Cyclones to victory over the Badgers in the 2022 NCAA Tournament. That game is already interesting because Otzelberger coached at SDSU and took the Jackrabbits to two NCAA Tournaments before going to work at UNLV. After two seasons there, he moved on to Iowa State.
As they did last year, FAU’s top three scorers are back: Johnell Davis (18.0 points, 3.0 assists), Alijah Martin (13.6 points, 5.9 rebounds), and Vladislav Goldin (15.1 points, 6.7 rebounds).
ESPN: Wisconsin is a No. 6 seed and will play South Florida.
Joe Lunardi also has Wisconsin playing a Florida team, but it’s South Florida, the 11th seed, while Wisconsin is the 6th seed. They would play either No. 3 Baylor or No. 14 Oakland, which is in the Horizon League and wants to play in Omaha.
South Florida is led by Chris Youngblood (15.0 points per game) and Jayden Reed, whose name comes from the Packers.
The Sports News’ Bill Bender thinks that Wisconsin is the best No. 6 seed. Fox Sports does too.
