Upstaging the Illinois Fighting Illini at Mackey Arena on Feb. 20, the Purdue Boilermakers basketball team defended its national No. 3 ranking and solidified a stand in the NCAA Tournament next month. The Boilers are the top dog in the Big Ten right now, surpassing Michigan State (thanks to MSU's loss to Ohio State) during the last week of February.

Here are the top 10 teams in the NBA as I see them as of Feb. 22, 2010, listed in order.

Los Angeles Lakers: The Cavaliers have a good chance to overtake the Lakers for this spot down the stretch, but they're still adjusting to the presence of Antawn Jamison. The Lakers have done a great job keeping their heads above water while Kobe Bryant has been out, going as far as to beat the red-hot Jazz without him.

The New York Knicks swung a pretty significant three-team deal at the trade deadline, shipping Jared Jeffries, Jordan Hill, the team's 2012 first-round pick and the right to swap first-rounders in 2011 to Houston and Larry Hughes to Sacramento in exchange for Tracy McGrady and Sergio Rodriguez. This trade did a variety of things for the Knicks, but the central asset it brought the organization was additional cap space this coming summer.

On Feb. 16, the Los Angeles Clippers agreed to trade center Marcus Camby to the Portland Trail Blazers for small forward Travis Outlaw and point guard Steve Blake. The Clippers also sent $1.5 million Portland's way and agreed to pay $2 million of incentive earnings to Camby. This is a trade that made a lot of sense for both teams, and while the names involved don't necessarily make NBA tickets fly off the shelves, both clubs should be helped by this deal.

For the past two seasons the New York Knicks have been looking for a way to free up enough salary cap space to pursue two max-level free agents in the summer of 2010. Once thought to be an impossible task, team president Donnie Walsh has swung trade after trade over the past two years and finally accomplished his goal. It came to fruition when Walsh sent Jared Jeffries to Houston in a three-team deadline deal.

The first big deal of the 2010 NBA trading season was made by the Washington Wizards, as they sent Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stevenson to the Dallas Mavericks in exchange for Josh Howard, Drew Gooden, Quinton Ross and James Singleton. The trade sends these two teams in opposite directions, both financially and from a talent standpoint.

As I was watching the 2010 NBA All-Star Game recently, I got to thinking about how some of the players on the floor just played at a different level than the others, despite being on the court with the best guys in the league. I started thinking about which players are truly the best guys in the NBA today. Here are the five players that I would most want to start a team with if my goal was to win a title as soon as possible.

March is just around the corner, so college basketball fans everywhere are looking at the standings of their favorite conference, wondering which teams are going to make the NCAA Tournament. With the bigger conferees, the BCS leagues, there's a chance that perhaps half a dozen or more teams will get a ticket to The Dance. But for the mid-majors like the West Coast Conference two teams making the Tournament is considered an exceptionally good season.

There's a reason why basketball is just as notorious as cornfields in the state of Indiana. JaJuan Johnson, E'Twaun Moore and Robbie Hummel proved why on Feb. 17, when the Purdue Boilermakers men's basketball team trumped the Ohio State Buckeyes 60-57 on OSU's home turf. Johnson, Moore and Hummel, all juniors at Purdue and homegrown Indiana natives, fought for a win against the Buckeyes, and their current 20-3 record (as of Feb.

Adam Koch scored 21 points, Kwadzo Ahelegbe added 10 and No. 24 Northern Iowa defeated Southern Illinois 55-52. Get NCAA Basketball tickets and see Koch lead his team to victory.

The Panthers (21-2, 12-1 Missouri Valley) are 11-0 at home this year. Northern Iowa coach Ben Jacobson said Koch performed well down the stretch. The coach continued to say, "He's come through for our team a number of times.