Beating Iowa would get us to the fringe (#23-#30 range) and subsequently beating (a theoretically unbeaten) Northwestern would get us to about #20-#25ish. And given the poor reputation of the BigTen lately, conference wins against Iowa, Northwestern, and wisky, while actually very impressive, still won't weigh terribly heavily in the polls this year.
None of those games will be easy by any stretch of the imagination - we will really have to improve to beat each of those teams.
The measure of this year's team really shouldn't be it's poll numbers, but which bowl game, if any (knock on wood), we go to - which is, of course, mostly proportional to our conference standings this season.