This weekend's Illinois game will be super important for top 25

[RUfinal4]

We beat a top 25 team at home which is really good but in the recent AP and Coaches polls we didn't have any votes
https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/basketball-men/d1/usa-today-coaches

A letdown vs Illinois on the road will probably get us only a few votes if any..

A win vs Illinois and we are probably ranked 24th or 25th depending on if the teams ahead of us had losses this week. The voters should put us ahead of SHU and PSU at a minimum.Probably Iowa too since Nebraska beat them.
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Because of the RU basketball drought for the past 30 years we will not get much respect with voters yet. Right now the B10 has parity with everyone beating each other, with the exception of Mich St which is the cream of the crop. We would need to beat teams like MD, Mich, Iowa, Purdue, and Ohio St to be a season long top 25 team and guaranteed tourney selection.

We are 12-3 with 16 conference games left + B10 tourney

Can we get 8 wins out of the remaining games to finish with 20?
7-9 rest of regular season and 1-1 in tourney?
20-13 would be our record then

 

[Dpgru]

Get used to it. The thing about winning is that each win, and this is true in all sports, makes the next game a big game. Winning keeps the season alive. As long as the season is alive every “next game” is a big game. We haven’t experienced this feeling in a long long time. Welcome to the BIG.

 

[AreYouNUTS]

Do we even care about the “human” polls? How much weight do they carry these days (re: post-season)?