Not this year.

The Big Ten race is so unusual this season it’s hard not to scratch your head and wonder how teams with four losses are sitting in the top two spots. But that’s how it is with Iowa and Ohio State, which hold conference records of 11-4 and 10-4, respectively.

Had a team finished last season with four losses in the Big Ten, they would not have claimed one of the top three spots.

The MSU women’s basketball team went 13-3 in the Big Ten last season, which was only good enough for third place, while Ohio State claimed the title at 15-1.

MSU head coach Suzy Merchant has attributed the odd conference race to young squads, an obscene amount of injuries and four first-year Big Ten coaches.

The Spartans started the season off 3-5 in the Big Ten, causing a dance at the bottom of the conference with Northwestern and Wisconsin that lasted for about a month.

Currently, after pulling out a few of the famous Spartans last-minute wins to finally put them above the .500 mark, MSU is sitting in sixth place — their highest ranking all season.

As if the season wasn’t odd enough, each Big Ten team has won games they shouldn’t and vice versa — note MSU’s Dec. 30 win over then-No. 17 Ohio State.

Watching the standings week after week, it is as if no team can put together any kind of momentum, or luck for that matter, to conjure up a winning streak — capping out at two or three straight wins.

So when I saw Iowa concocting a win streak that just kept mounting, eventually vaulting them from eighth to first in less than a month, I thought there was finally a Big Ten team coming through as the true winner.

Then on Valentine’s Day, Purdue trounced the Hawkeyes by 13 points to end their winning streak at eight games.

No love there.

The Hawkeyes’ streak will be the only of the season for any team, as each squad has only three or four games left in the Big Ten.

No team can match it even if they win out.

MSU has three games left until the Big Ten Tournament, and ironically enough, with a current Big Ten record of 8-7, if all games end in Spartans favor they can grab a top-three spot. That is, if all five teams ahead of them in the standings drop all of their games.

So while my hopes aren’t that high for a phenomenal Big Ten season for the Spartans, I am comforted that only three wins currently separate MSU from top-ranked Iowa.

Allison Grant is the State News women’s basketball reporter. Send her comments to grantall@msu.edu.