The Big Ten was oddly top-heavy in 2024-25. Only eight (of 18) Big Ten teams made the Big Dance, but all of them earned a No. 7 seed or better. It marked a wildly successful year of Big Ten basketball, even without a single team advancing to the Final Four and despite the debacles in Piscataway and Bloomington.
But both blessings and curses hit the league this spring. There’s a serious drain of high-level talent. The Big Ten could have up to eight first-round picks later this month in the 2025 NBA Draft.
Conversely, no league dominated the coaching carousel more than the Big Ten. Indiana hired West Virginia’s Darian DeVries, who was firmly in the mix for Big 12 Coach of the Year. Iowa nabbed Ben McCollum, who was one of the serious contenders for National Coach of the Year. Minnesota plucked Niko Medved, who is lauded as one of the elite coaches in the Mountain West year after year.
Ranking SEC basketball teams by tiers: Kentucky, Florida at top of conference poised to dominate again
Isaac Trotter
The 2025-26 season looks poised to have a mix of real national championship contenders combined with much-improved depth in this league. On paper, the Big Ten likely has a dozen rosters with legitimate NCAA Tournament hopes. So, how do we parse the contenders from the pretenders in an ultra-deep league where the margins are oh, so slim? Things could change by November, depending on whether there’s a late flip in the portal, a splashy international addition or if summer film work/data dumpster-diving unearths new opinion-shifting revelations, but consider this a way-too-early snapshot with almost all of the Big Ten rosters close to set and newcomers sidling into campus this week for…
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