Big Ten ready for big test

There's enough pressure to ace a test when your own grade is on the line.

But when there are others who'll also benefit from your prospective “A” or penalized by your potential “F” more tension gets added to the crucible.

Behold the power of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, the 11-game, early-season spotlight that provided the Big Ten great delight when it finally won the thing last year.

The Big Ten's bid to repeat took a big hit Monday night when No. 15 Minnesota couldn't defend its home court against Virginia.

Now the league has just four home games left, which means Illinois and Northwestern need to pull their weight Tuesday night to keep hope alive.

The unbeaten Wildcats host Georgia Tech at 6 p.m., and the 20th-ranked Illini host recently unranked North Carolina at 8:30 p.m.

“This is our first-semester final exams this week, to see where we're at,” said Illinois coach Bruce Weber, lumping Saturday's trip to Seattle to face Gonzaga into the mix.

“Now, you've still got another semester coming up and there's a long way to go and a middle stretch in there where you can make a lot of improvement. But this is kind of a midterm to see where you're at.”

The Big Ten has more at stake than the ACC in this year's Challenge. Throughout the summer and the fall, the Big Ten has been touted as college basketball's colossus.

The early calculations from Ken Pomeroy suggest the Big Ten has lived up to the talk as the clear national leader, but Jeff Sagarin's ratings show the Big East a half-step ahead.

“It's a marquee event,” Weber said. “Everybody's watching. It gets great publicity. If you do win it, I'm not sure it's a great positive but it's not a negative.

“A lot of times the national media becomes more of a negative thing if you don't win it, especially this year. We've had more hype as a league than the ACC has had.”

Hype is one thing, but teams like Northwestern need the Big Ten to maintain heady power rankings and RPI numbers in order to improve their chances to make the NCAA Tournament.

According to Pomeroy, the Wildcats have played one of the nation's 10-weakest nonconference slates to date.

Not only do they need to beat Georgia Tech likely their best pre-conference opponent unless they meet St. John's in the Holiday Festival title game Dec. 21 at Madison Square Garden they need their 19-plus games against Big Ten teams to drown out the effect of the nonconference games.