EVANSTON, Ill. -- There was no spirited on-court celebration. There was no championship trophy presentation. There were no nets cut down.

The University of Wisconsin men's basketball team did all of that in the wake of Wednesday's victory that clinched at least a share of the Big Ten Conference regular-season title.

What Saturday's 65-52 victory over Northwestern in front of a predominantly red-clad crowd of 8,117 at Welsh-Ryan Arena allowed the 10th-ranked Badgers to do, however, was ensure they will be only team that can be called Big Ten champions this season.

"To win it outright is nice because then it eliminates some of the conversation for this part of the season," said UW coach Bo Ryan, whose team also secured the No. 1 seed for this week's Big Ten tournament at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. "Now it goes into the second season, which is your postseason tournament. But the first season is over, and there's one team that stands alone. And that 's the team that's in that locker room right there. That feels pretty good."

Saturday, though, certainly didn't serve as a 40-minute victory lap for the Badgers (26-4 overall, 16-2 Big Ten).

Last-place Northwestern (8-21, 1-17), which routinely has made things difficult for UW at Welsh-Ryan in recent seasons, gave the Badgers all they could handle for a considerable portion of the first half.

The Wildcats were within 21-20 with 5:30 to play before halftime. But a UW team that had made seven of 17 shots and committed six turnovers to that point closed the half with an 8-0 run.

It started with sophomore guard Jason Bohannon driving down the left baseline and dishing the ball to senior center Brian Butch for a dunk. Bohannon followed that up by scoring on a drive to the basket. And after another conversion by Butch on the interior, Bohannon banked in a runner from right of the lane as time expired to give UW a 29-20 halftime lead.

"There are runs when you play Northwestern. There are runs when you play everybody, either for or against," Ryan said. "But we can take 30 minutes out of every Northwestern game ... They run their stuff, they're getting looks, they're knocking shots down. Defensively they're getting deflections. ... There's that fine line in some of these games that (Northwestern coach Bill Carmody) and his team didn't quite get over. But when you prepare to play them, those kind of runs, if you can get eight (points) in a row, that's like 20 in a row against some other teams, believe me."

The Badgers, who shot 48.9 percent from the field and outrebounded the Wildcats 38-21, were able to build the advantage in the second half courtesy of a 10-0 run -- highlighted by eight points from junior forward Marcus Landry -- that pushed their lead to 47-29 with 10:45 to play. Northwestern didn't get closer than 11 points the rest of the way.

While Bohannon finished with 15 points and Landry totaled 12, it was a 20-point, 14-rebound performance by the 6-foot-11 Butch -- his fifth double-double of the season -- that merited the most attention.

"He's playing against a smaller team. You know what, there are big guys that can't get that against smaller teams. ... It's not as easy (as) you think," Ryan said of Butch, who finished 8-for-12 from the field and matched a career high in rebounds. "Brian has been very effective for us and pretty consistent this year. And to finish the regular season this way for him as a senior and to close it out this way -- very appropriate for Brian Butch."

And as far as Butch was concerned, this was the appropriate finish to the regular season for the Badgers.

"We did an excellent job of closing it out. We knew what we had to do, we got it done. It's a great feeling to be able to close it out like that and have the Big Ten championship outright," Butch said. "It speaks volumes to this team and what we really want to do and how far we want to go. Hopefully we made a little statement here, but we have a lot of basketball left to play."