NCAA committee leaves No. 7 Wisconsin, Big Ten off initial top 16

For the first time ever, the NCAA committee revealed its own top-16 rankings prior to the NCAA tournament, and while a number of expected teams cracked the upper echelon, one conference in particular was left out in the cold.

After the first four seeds in each region were revealed during Saturday's broadcast on CBS, the Big Ten found itself unrepresented despite having multiple teams ranked in the nation's top 25. Three teams - Wisconsin, Purdue, and Maryland - currently find themselves ranked, but were still shunned from the NCAA committee's initial rankings.

So how could Big Ten teams be spurned from the initial rankings in favor of much lower-ranked teams? According to selection committee chair and Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis, a main factor was how those teams fared out of conference.

Most shocking of the omissions was clearly Wisconsin, ranked No. 7 in the nation with all three losses coming against ranked teams. The Badgers suffered a conference defeat to Purdue and non-conference defeats at the hands of North Carolina and Creighton.

Despite wins against respectable non-conference teams such as Tennessee, Georgetown, Syracuse, and Oklahoma, the Badgers apparently didn't give the committee enough to put them in the first installment of the rankings.

While the argument around non-conference scheduling is brought up every year around selection time, Wisconsin has proven itself to be a consistently relevant program among the nation's elite. The rankings are only speculative at this point, so the Badgers could use this as motivation heading down the final stretch of the regular season.