And how do you determine right now? 1 game? 2 games? 5 games? The college season is short enough that all games matter to help inform your decision. More recent games matter a little more, but the past games will give you broader context as to what may be a fluke streak versus how good a team actually is. Before Maryland and Penn State, I thought most of our wins were lucky, and most of our losses were unlucky in BIG play. Overall, it has evened out.
Yes, we are hot right now – but Wisconsin has won more games convincingly than we have. They also beat us on the road. They deserve to be ranked higher, imo. Predictive models bear that out, as well – even some where recent games are favored. For example, Sagarin’s ‘Recent’ predictive model has Wisconsin ranked 18th and Minnesota ranked 29th.
Minneosta's RPI is inflated against the rest of the conference because margin of victory, to my knowledge, doesn’t matter. That will also play out if you do a ‘blind resume’ and try to compare records vs Top 25, Top 50, or Top 100. You don’t see how close the games were.
I think one of the best indicators would be to look at the Vegas odds to win the NCAA tourney or BIG tournament. Unfortunately, I can’t go to gambling sites at work. I hypothesize Wisconsin has better odds than we do.
That said – I really like where we are right now. You can argue that we are playing the best in the BIG. If someone puts us ahead of Wisconsin in their rankings, I get it. The last 5 games they are 1-4 and we are 5-0 with signature wins. If you expand to 10 games, we are 7-3 and they are 6-4 – and there’s not much of a difference.