With opponents such as Northwestern, Ohio State, Xavier and Alabama-Birmingham out of the way, college basketball observers might speculate the hard part is over for Butler.

The Bulldogs, and especially coach Brad Stevens, would forcefully object. As far as they're concerned, the hard part is beginning.

"By far, to me, this is the best I've seen our league in the nine years that I've been here," Stevens said.

No. 25 Butler resumes a bid for a third successive regular-season title in the Horizon League tonight at Valparaiso. WFYI digital television will broadcast the game, with the signal available on WFYI-Plus DT 20.3 (channel 119 on Bright House cable, channel 242 on Comcast).

The Horizon, after a poor start, has climbed to 10th out of 31 conferences in Ratings Percentage Index. Until the Bulldogs' Dec. 23 victory at No. 14 Xavier, the top non-league wins were by Cleveland State (at No. 11 Syracuse) and Illinois-Chicago (at Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech).

Wisconsin-Milwaukee leads the league at 3-0. Wisconsin-Green Bay (111th) is nearly in the RPI top 100 along with Butler (No. 2), Cleveland State (70th), UIC (77th) and Milwaukee (97th).

Wright State has won seven of eight, losing only at No. 6 Wake Forest.

Valpo can't be dismissed, either, despite its 252 RPI rating. The 4-9 Crusaders were competitive for at least a half in losses to No. 1 North Carolina (85-63) and No. 9 Purdue (59-45).

Butler, then ranked 10th, never led until the closing 17 seconds of last year's 71-68 victory at Valpo. The record crowd of 5,432 made it the most difficult environment the Bulldogs played in all season.

Stevens acknowledged these new Bulldogs' new ranking makes them targeted. He said this is what he tells them:

"Just remember, anybody that voted for you now didn't vote for you two months ago. And we've got the same team.

"Keep that in mind and realize whether you have a number next to your (team) name or not, just continue to play to the best of your ability. That is the goal, one possession at a time."

Stevens said Butler's 2-0 league start doesn't guarantee anything. Nor does a poor start, he added.

The Bulldogs won regular-season titles after beginning 3-3 in 2002 and 5-2 in 2008. Cleveland State was 7-0 last year and finished second to Butler.

"To talk about two or three teams possibly being in the running is really not fair because there's too many teams playing well," Stevens said.

Butler has won 13 in a row in regular-season league play. Green Bay won a record 21 straight from 1995-97.