Wisconsin Badgers Have Two of the Top Five Most Improbable Wins of the Basketball Season

The Wisconsin Badgers have pulled off multiple Top 10 upsets on the road, and the analytics show that they were two of the five most improbable wins of the college basketball season.

Wisconsin Badgers players react to a score during the second half against the Illinois Fighting Illini at State Farm Center. | Ron Johnson-Imagn Images

No team is going to want to face this year's Wisconsin Badgers in the NCAA Tournament.

Over the course of the season, Greg Gard's squad has shown it can hang with anybody, and you can't count them out until the clock shows zeros.

Their road wins over Top 10 teams Michigan and Illinois weren't just miraculous. They were two of the five most improbable wins of the college basketball season, according to Evan Miyakawa of EvanMiya.com.

Here are the teams with the best wins this season, based on the difficulty of the matchup.

Wisconsin holds two of the top five wins, per https://t.co/cegyfz96ax 👇 pic.twitter.com/YzB2s18KLB

— Evan Miyakawa (@EvanMiya) February 11, 2026

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He calculated what the win probability in each game would be for an average bubble team playing that opponent.

Wisconsin's win over then-undefeated Michigan remains the most unlikely win of any team this season.

The theoretical average bubble team would have just a 1.1 percent chance of winning that game. The Badgers won by three and led for all of the last four minutes of the game.

Tuesday's win over Illinois was almost as unlikely. Miyakawa has that win as a 5.2 percent change of victory for an average bubble team, tied for the fourth most improbable decision of the season.

In many ways, that game felt even more improbable given how Wisconsin trailed for so much of the game and was down double-digits with only seven minutes remaining.

Related: Confident Austin Rapp predicted he'd hit the big shots to lift Wisconsin over No.8 Illinois

Wisconsin Badgers guard John Blackwell (25) shoots on Michigan Wolverines forward Morez Johnson Jr. (21) in the second half at Crisler Center. | Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images

It took overtime to pull off the upset win over the Illini, but No. 8 Illinois hadn't been quite the juggernaut that Michigan was when it hosted UW in January.

It didn't help that Illinois had a similarly tough loss in December to Nebraska on a game-winning buzzer beater, which tied the Wisconsin game with a 5.2 percent winning chance for an average bubble team.

It's clear the Badgers are much more dangerous than an average bubble team, and they have the potential to make some real noise in March Madness.

They've already knocked off some of the best teams in the Big Ten. They won't have much fear taking on No. 1 or 2 seeds in the NCAA Tournament.

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