Still, it has to hurt when a team -- indeed, an entire conference -- is snubbed by the NCAA tournament selection committee.

With its 61-48 victory over Illinois Sunday at Conseco Fieldhouse, UW became the fourth team in the 11 years of the Big Ten tournament to add a tournament title to an outright regular-season championship. But historical precedent wasn't invited to the committee's hotel room a short distance from Conseco.

The first three double dippers in Big Ten history were awarded with No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament. UW was, um, awarded a No. 3 seed Sunday. Some award.

UW is 29-4 and hasn't lost to a team other than Purdue in three months, yet it couldn't squeeze past 27-5 Georgetown, which lost to Pitt in the Big East Conference final Saturday, or 27-6 Texas, which it beat at Austin in December, for a No. 2 seed.

That is a warning signal for the Big Ten more than for UW. The committee showed what it thought of the conference people love to bash when it made Michigan State a fifth seed, Purdue a sixth, Indiana an eighth and left Ohio State out altogether. Even though the conference's power rating is sixth, the worst mark among BCS leagues, every one of those teams had a right to feel snubbed Sunday.

Everyone but UW, according to coach Bo Ryan.

"Actually," he said, "we've moved up in respect, getting a two (seed) last year and a three this year because we did have an injury (to Brian Butch) and a lot of people thought that we weren't going to be a two last year."

As UW has gone up, however, the Big Ten has gone down. The league needs to move its tournament final to Saturday and its teams need to beef up their non-conference schedules because the national perception of the Big Ten as a plodding, brutish, no-talent league is growing.

"I think it starts early and then perception becomes reality," Ryan said. "I know there was a lot of people that wouldn't want to play a lot of teams in our league later in the year. Still, it's more about the matchups (than the seeds) in the tournament."

Maybe so, but UW's matchup against a sub-.500 Illinois team Sunday all but precluded it from being a two seed. Because of the game's late start, the committee ignores the result of the Big Ten final every year. And despite saying it would put more weight on conference tournaments this year, the committee did so again Sunday.

Think about it: If the committee locked in UW as a two seed early in the day and the Badgers later lost to the Illini, the committee would be ripped to shreds. Therefore, it seems logical UW was a three seed from the start.

Fortunately, it's not likely to matter. If UW and second-seeded Georgetown take care of business on the first weekend, they will meet in the third round anyway. And the committee did give UW a close-to-home path through Omaha and Detroit.

"It doesn't matter what seed you have," UW guard Michael Flowers said. "The only thing that matters is how we play and if you win or not."

UW may not be worrying after Sunday, but the Big Ten should be.