The ‘Cats took a modest step up the polls after a rather unimpressive victory over Ball State on Saturday.  Northwestern moved up to 17, jumping over Arizona and Oregon who fell from 16 and 13 respectively.

The Wildcats are still looking up at USC, despite their transitive win over the Trojans via the Stanford game, but on the whole, it’s hard to be too unhappy with the jump after scraping past a mid-tier MAC team.

Here are the teams ahead of Northwestern for your rooting interest: