Can you see it? I can. It’s stratification in this crazy Big Ten title chase. Ohio State, Michigan State and Michigan sit atop the standings with 5-2 league marks. Right behind that trio are Wisconsin, Illinois and Purdue with three conference defeats.

The Big Ten Conference released its Men’s Basketball Players of the Week for Jan. 16-22 action on Monday morning. See the winners and what they did to win the honors in this post.

The Big Ten men’s basketball coaches held their weekly Big Ten teleconference Monday with reporters from around the league, and we’ve posted the audio from each phone interview in the post below. BTN.com will post these media sessions each Monday right up to the Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament, and all of our audio can be found in our BTN.com audio archive.

After the injury to Trevor Mbakwe, I fully expected this to be somewhat of a “what if?” season for the Gophers. And that certainly appeared to be the case through four conference games, as Minnesota stumbled to a 0-4 start in the Big Ten. But Tubby Smith’s team has responded by winning three straight games, most recently in a stomping of Northwestern at The Barn. And although Minnesota had dropped some close games over its losing streak, the turnaround isn’t simply a matter of fortunate ball bounces:

In the wake of Joe Paterno’s death, BTN aired a special presentation Sunday night: “Remembering Joe Paterno.” The hour-long show featured our crew discussing Paterno’s life and legacy and included interviews with some of the people in the college football community who knew the all-time winningest coach best. Watch Dave Revsine’s interview with legendary broadcaster Keith Jackson now and see several other interviews, including ones with Bobby Bowden, Urban Meyer and many others, in this post.