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Pat Forde of ESPN.com has a look at the college basketball universe with just five days to go before Selection Sunday, and when he gets to the Big Ten, he writes this:

Is there a Final Four contender in here anywhere? How about a fifth NCAA Tournament team? Hello? Anyone?

Team to beat: Wisconsin (23). Sizzle-less Badgers haven't lost to anyone other than Purdue since Dec. 8 -- and it says here they'll beat the Boilermakers when they meet a third time in the championship game.

I do think Ohio State is looking fairly solid as a fifth Tournament team, but I agree with Forde that it's hard to see how there's a Final Four contender, and that the Big Ten's best team, Wisconsin, is fairly sizzle-less.

Any Big Ten team that's good enough to make the Tournament is good enough to also make the Final Four, in the sense that you never know who's going to go on a surprising four-game run. But realistically, the Big Ten looks like it's staggering into March Madness, and I have a feeling that the conference is going to look just as bad at the end of March as it has at the beginning of January the last couple of years.