Men's Basketball
See also: 2011–12 Big Ten Conference men's basketball season and 2012 Big Ten Conference Men's Basketball TournamentThe Big Ten has participated in basketball since 1904, and has led the nation in attendance every season since 1978. It has been a national powerhouse in men's basketball, having multiple championship winners and often sending four or more teams to the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Previous NCAA champions include Indiana with five titles, Michigan State with two, and Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio State with one each. Ohio State played in the first NCAA tournament national championship game in 1939, losing to Oregon. Despite this, Jimmy Hull of Ohio State was the first NCAA tournament MVP. The first three tournament MVPs came from the Big Ten (Marv Huffman of Indiana in 1940 and John Katz of Wisconsin in 1941).
Big Ten teams have also experienced success in the postseason NIT. Since 1974, 13 Big Ten teams have made it to the championship game, winning eight championships. NIT champions from the Big Ten include Michigan and Ohio State with two, and Indiana, Minnesota, Penn State, and Purdue with one each.
In addition, the Helms Athletic Foundation recognizes Illinois as the 1915 National Champions, Minnesota as the 1902 and 1919 National Champions, Northwestern as the 1931 National Champion, Purdue as the 1932 National Champions, and Wisconsin as the 1912, 1914 and 1916 National Champions.
Since 1999, the Big Ten has taken part in the ACC–Big Ten Challenge with the Atlantic Coast Conference. The ACC holds a 10–3 record against the Big Ten, and Ohio State is the only Big Ten school without a losing record in the challenge.
Read more about this topic: Big Ten Conference
Famous quotes containing the words men and/or basketball:
“We like the chase better than the quarry.... And those who philosophize on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase, which turns away our attention from these, does screen us.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)