Rastall's Ramblings: Badgers Become Tourney Locks With Marquee Wins

If you’re a top-10 team in college basketball, there aren’t many opponents you’d rather see less right about now than the Wisconsin Badgers.

The Wisconsin men’s basketball team all but removed themselves from the NCAA Tournament bubble conversation (in a good way) with their best week of the season, going on the road and knocking off No. 8 Illinois in overtime and then returning to the Kohl Center and steamrolling No. 10 Michigan State.

Just like that, the Badgers have solidified their place as a virtual lock for March Madness. From this point forward, all we the fans really need to think about is seeding ramifications, not whether we’ll be sweating it out to see if Wisconsin’s name is called on Selection Sunday.

It’s wild how quickly Wisconsin’s fortunes have changed over the last month, having only worked their way onto the right side of the bubble with a monumental road win over Michigan (still the Wolverines’ lone loss on the season at the time of writing this) back on Jan. 10.

A home triumph over UCLA several days before that Michigan game marked the start of a stretch that has totally flipped the script on what had been a frustrating season to that point. Following last Friday’s Michigan State win, the Badgers extended their hot stretch to nine wins in 11 games, with those only two losses coming by a combined three points.

Those road wins over Michigan and Illinois have given Wisconsin the well-earned reputation of giant killers and served as the crown jewels of a recurring trend in the Greg Gard era: the Badgers are now 7-10 on the road against top-10 opponents under Gard.

The thrashing of Michigan State in Madison isn’t going to pop off the page on the résumé quite like those elite road victories, but it was still another win over a Big Ten heavyweight and hammered home the fact that this Wisconsin team has more than turned a corner and still has its sights set on plenty more this season.

Earning a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament is unquestionably attainable for this group. Even a No. 5 seed feels on the table if they’re able to maintain their current hot streak for the remainder of the regular season.

A third Big Ten regular-season title under Gard is an extreme long shot — the Badgers would need to win out to finish 16-4 and even that wouldn’t likely be enough since it’s hard to imagine Michigan finishing with worse than a 17-3 conference record.

That said, Wisconsin is right in the mix for a top-four seed in the Big Ten that would earn them a double bye in the conference tournament.

Selection Sunday is still about a month away, so it’s not time to pop any champagne bottles yet. But as of this moment, the Badgers look like one of the hottest teams in the country. It’s only natural to start daydreaming a little bit about what March might hold.