Is the Big Ten Headed for a Major Setback in 2014-15?

The Big Ten can forget about being the gold standard for college basketball conferences in 2014-15.

With its recent string of bad luck and ugly losses, it might not even be in the running for silver or bronze, either.

Over the past four seasons, the Big Ten was king. It sent 26 out of a possible 47 teams to the NCAA tournament for a placement rate of 55.3 percent. The Big 12 is just barely behind at 54.8 percent, but the ACC (37.3 percent), Pac-12 (37.0 percent) and SEC (28.8 percent) aren't even in the same zip code.

(The Big East has the highest percentage at 56.1 thanks to that 11-bid season in 2010-11, but the new-look Big East only sent four of 10 teams last year.)

Tony Ding/Associated Press

Before this season began, the consensus tournament field on BracketMatrix.com—made up of 33 projected brackets from around the Web—had a total of eight Big Ten teams projected to receive a No. 10 seed or better.

That may have all gone up in smoke thanks to a week in which Michigan lost to NJIT and Eastern Michigan, Nebraska lost to Creighton and Incarnate Word and Purdue lost to North Florida—all at home.

The Big Ten has more than reached its quota of ill-advised losses.

Even worse, it is desperately lacking quality nonconference wins by teams other than Wisconsin. Yes, Maryland beat Iowa State and Iowa beat North Carolina, but that's pretty much the end of the list.

Just about every ratings metric out there is a bit screwy after one month, but we looked at where the Big Ten is ranked and how it has fared against the top 50 teams according to RPI, Sagarin and KenPom.

The results aren't pretty.

Team	Average Rank	vs. Sag Top 50	vs. RPI Top 50	vs. KP Top 50
Wisconsin	8.3	3-1	3-1	3-1
Ohio State	16.7	0-1	0-1	0-1
Michigan State	24.0	0-3	0-2	0-3
Mayland	29.7	1-1	1-1	1-1
Illinois	44.0	1-2	1-1	1-2
Minnesota	46.3	0-2	1-2	1-2
Iowa	55.3	1-2	1-2	1-3
Purdue	74.3	2-0	0-0	2-0
Penn State	76.7	1-0	1-1	0-0
Indiana	82.0	0-2	0-2	1-1
Michigan	86.3	0-2	0-2	1-2
Nebraska	107.3	0-0	0-2	0-0
Northwestern	125.7	0-2	0-1	0-2
Rutgers	139.3	0-3	0-3	0-2
Total	N/A	9-21	8-21	11-20

Ratings as of the start of play on Monday, December 15.

Take away Wisconsin's quality wins and the rest of the Big Ten is a combined 5-21 vs. RPI Top 50 teams.

For sake of comparison, the Big East is 9-11 vs. RPI Top 50, the Big 12 is 6-7 and the ACC is 17-12.

Regardless of the rating system you choose, Purdue and Penn State are the only Big Ten teams other than Wisconsin with a winning record against top 50 teams. However, the Boilermakers aren't looking too pretty with three losses against teams outside the top 50 and Penn State has only played that one somewhat noteworthy game against George Washington.

Whether you prefer Sagarin rankings, KenPom rankings or RPI rankings, Ohio State and Michigan State are rated as two of the top four teams in the Big Ten. Yet, neither one of them has beaten a team better than Marquette. Unless Ohio State plans on beating North Carolina on Dec. 20, neither one will be adding a quality nonconference win, either.

Eventually, we need to start asking ourselves the same kind of questions the selection committee will be asking:

What would actually count as a quality win in this conference?

Let's pretend for a few minutes that Wisconsin will go 18-0 in Big Ten play. It's an unlikely proposition—it almost seems inevitable that the Badgers will lose at least a game or two—but let's hypothetically remove the possibility of a top-10, resume-altering win for everyone else in the conference.

Could a 9-9 conference record possibly carry the same amount of clout that it has in recent years?

Hannah Foslien/Associated Press

Let's use Minnesota as an example, as the Golden Gophers average out to the sixth-best team between the three rating systems. Their best nonconference win is a neutral-court game against Georgia. After that, maybe the road game against Wake Forest? Whatever their second-best win is, it's nothing special.

For the Gophers to get to 9-9 in conference play (9-7 after ignoring the two losses to 18-0 Wisconsin), they're likely looking at home wins over Rutgers, Northwestern, Penn State, Nebraska, Purdue, Illinois and Iowa as well as road wins over Penn State and Indiana.

Maybe they sub in a better win or two along the way, but that simply means that one of the above nine games now sits on their resume as a questionable loss.

If the Golden Gophers had a couple of quality nonconference wins, then, sure, that might be a good enough 21-11 (9-9) record to be comfortably on the right side of the bubble. Given Minnesota's lack of quality wins, though, it might take an 11-7 conference record to have a tournament-worthy resume.

And the Golden Gophers are in better shape than most, as their two losses (Louisville and St. John's on neutral courts) aren't bad by any stretch of the imagination. Conversely, a team like Michigan or Nebraska could have even more conference work to do to make us overlook some bad losses.

Not only has this conference not produced many big wins thus far, but these teams are quickly running out of time to add noteworthy nonconference wins, too.

This Saturday will be crucial, though. Ohio State faces North Carolina, Iowa gets Northern Iowa, Michigan hosts SMU, Purdue draws Notre Dame and Indiana is going up against Butler.

That's five chances to either pick up key wins or reinforce the narrative that there's no meat in this conference beyond Wisconsin. Outside of this coming Saturday (20th), the only big opportunity for the Big Ten is Indiana's game against Georgetown on the 27th.

Look, we're not saying the Big Ten is a one-bid league. Rather, we're questioning whether the preseason expectations of eight bids is even remotely a possibility any longer.

Things in the Big Ten aren't nearly as dire as they are in the AAC. Those teams have gone a combined 2-15 vs. RPI Top 50. It's not as bad as the SEC, either, where teams not named Kentucky or LSU are 2-14 vs. RPI Top 50.

However, those conferences aren't supposed to send as many teams to the tournament as the Big Ten does annually. The Big Ten is supposed to compare favorably to the likes of the Big 12 and ACC, but that isn't currently the case.

In Jerry Palm's bracket from Monday morning, the Big Ten is still projected to send seven teams to the tournament. However, two of those teams are No. 11 seeds (Illinois and Minnesota) and a third is Penn State, which, come on, really?

We'll see how things shake out on Saturday and whether Wisconsin decides to share some wealth by doling out quality wins in conference play, but it's growing increasingly difficult to envision a scenario in which the Big Ten sends 50 percent of its teams to the 2015 NCAA tournament.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.