Wednesday, January 10, 2007

It's great to be a Badger fan.

The Badgers B-Ball team beat the Buckeyes 72-69 last night to make it 2 big losses in a row for the vaunted OSU sports programs. While this loss was not as embarassing as the major egg the football team laid playing for the national championship, it wasn't as good of a performance as the score suggests either. The Buckeyes were down by double digits in the 2nd half and had a big rally helped by some poor FT shooting from the Badgers near the end to make the score look closer than it really should have been.

This win undoubtedly cements the Badgers as one of the teams to beat come March/April as this is their 3rd win over a top 15 team. Barring a major tanking or an inexplicable early exit from the Big 10 tourney, they will be a #1 seed in the Midwest Region.

Even though this is THE best Badgers team I have ever seen, or anyone else has for that matter, the Big Ten schedule is not going to be all that easy. Currently there is only 1 team with a losing record (Minnesota, who the Badgers manhandled already this year) while the rest of the Big Ten has a winning % of .725. Wow! Even if the schools are playing cupcakes, that is still a very impressive stat. The rest of the Big Ten is not getting a lot of love given how dominant WI and OSU have been, but this conference could have four 20 game winners easily (WI, OSU, MI and Purdue) and possibly 5 (Indiana). So it's not going to be easy and likely the Badgers will lose 2-3 conference games (on the road, as they simply don't lose at home). It's going to be a fun ride and the Badger faithful should have plenty to be happy about.

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