The Sports Pavilion at Minnesota clock read nothing but zeroes Sunday, the score locked at 66. Minnesota had upset then-No. 7 Penn State two days earlier, and Cara Pearson was at the foul line with a chance to deliver another improbable Golden Gopher win, this time over then-No. 19 Purdue.

The first free throw lifted, arced and fell -- victory, or so it seemed. Pearson was mobbed by her teammates, but their celebration resulted in a technical foul. Pearson sank her second shot, but Purdue was given two of their own to shoot at the other end.

Boilermaker Stacey Lovelace made the first but missed the second, and Minnesota savored a 68-67 victory and a second straight major upset.

"It was very bizarre," Minnesota Coach Linda Hill-MacDonald said.

Equally bizarre are the current Big Ten standings. Minnesota (8-5, 3-0 Big Ten), a perennial conference also-ran, is in a first-place tie with Wisconsin, another team usually fighting to stay out of the Big Ten cellar.

Meanwhile, Purdue and Penn State -- last year's co-champions and this year's favorites -- are injury-riddled and mired in a seventh-place tie. Even perennial powerhouse Iowa, while currently third, has a losing record.

Minnesota made its first-ever trip to the NCAA tournament last season, but it lost three starters to graduation, including all-time leading scorer Carol Ann Shudlick. In part because of that loss, Big Ten coaches predicted a ninth-place conference finish for the Gophers.

The preseason prognostication for No. 24 Wisconsin (11-2, 4-0) was not much brighter. First-year Coach Jane Albright-Dieterle took over a team that had a losing record and finished ninth in the Big Ten a year ago.

She was optimistic, but could she have possibly anticipated the best start for the Badgers in 13 years, first place in the conference, a school-record seven-game winning streak, and the team's first national ranking since 1992?

"I saw the problems (Wisconsin) had last year, and I was not sure how we were going to do," Albright-Dieterle said. "But after I saw my team practice, I had very high expectations.

"It's very early though," she added. "It doesn't mean a whole lot right now."

Purdue Coach Lin Dunn agrees. The early successes of Wisconsin and Minnesota are insignificant, she said, but for a different reason.

"They haven't been on the road yet," Dunn said of the teams' combined one game of conference road experience. "I want to see what they can do when they play at the Purdues, at the Penn States, at the Ohio States."

Forgive Dunn if she sounds a little cynical. The Boilermakers (9-5, 1-2) returned all five starters from last year's Final Four team, placing them No. 2 in the preseason Associated Press poll.

But like No. 12 Penn State, injuries have hit the Boilermakers hard. The Lady Lions (9-3, 1-2) have lost star guard Katina Mack for the season, and Purdue has played most of the year without preseason All-America center Leslie Johnson. As a result of her injury and several others, the Boilermakers have dropped 20 notches in the rankings to No. 22.

"I'd be tremendously disappointed if we had not had four starters out all or part of the season," Dunn said. "We've yet to have everybody back at the same time. We have no continuity."

Continuity is not Iowa's problem -- scoring is. The Hawkeyes' (6-7, 2-1) shooting this season has been about as successful as a democrat's re-election campaign. They are shooting a dismal 36.6 percent from the floor (30.8 percent Big Ten) and have just two players averaging more than 10 points a game.

Last week, Iowa shot 23 percent (14 of 61) from the field in a 79-43 shellacking at Western Kentucky -- the worst loss in Coach C. Vivian Stringer's 11-year tenure at the helm of the Hawkeyes.