Badger Women Meet Illinois at Big Ten Tourney
March 02, 2008 | Women's Basketball
The Badgers will be the eighth seed and meet No. 9 Illinois in the first round of the 2008 Big Ten Women's Basketball Tournament presented by Xbox 360 Live March 6-9 at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. The game will start approximately 4 p.m. CT Thursday and will be broadcast live on the Big Ten Network.
Wisconsin's game is the third of three games that first day starting with No. 7 Michigan vs. No. 10 Penn State at 11 a.m. CT, followed by No. 6 Indiana vs. No. 11 Northwestern 25 minutes after the conclusion of the first game. UW's game follows 25 minutes after the conclusion of game 2. A tournament bracket is attached.
Wisconsin (16-12, 9-9) finished tied for seventh in the conference with Michigan after losing 87-78 Sunday to eventual Big Ten regular season co-champion Sunday on senior day at the Kohl Center. An attendance of 13,320 saw the Hawks stop UW's five-game win streak at the Kohl Center, the seventh-largest attendance ever recorded in school history. UW averaged 6,391 in 15 home games this season, and 7,085 in conference only games.
Wisconsin's Jolene Anderson secured her second-straight Big Ten scoring title with a 19.6 points per game average in 18 Big Ten games. She averaged 19.7 points per game last year in edging three-time Big Ten Player of the Year Jessica Davenport of Ohio State. She is UW's first Big Ten scoring champion.
For the fourth consecutive season, Ohio State (22-7, 13-5) earned the No. 1 seed after finishing tied with Iowa (20-9, 13-5) for first in the final conference standings. The Buckeyes earned the top spot by virtue of a 2-0 record against the Hawkeyes.
Ohio State's No. 1 seed marks the first time in Big Ten history a team has captured four straight top billings. The Big Ten championship is Iowa's ninth overall and first since 1998. The Hawkeyes are seeded second in this year's tournament, marking the team's highest slot since 2001 when the team went on to win the tournament title.
Overall, the bracket for the 2008 Big Ten Women's Basketball Tournament presented by Xbox 360 Live featured four ties among the top eight teams as the first, third, fifth and seventh seeds were decided by tiebreakers. Three of the four tiebreakers went beyond head-to-head competition and were decided by the teams' record against the top two conference teams ' Iowa and Ohio State.
Since the first Big Ten Tournament in 1995, six teams have captured postseason titles with Purdue's six tournament titles (1998-99-2000-03-04-07) setting the Big Ten record. Iowa (1997-2001) and Penn State (1995-96) have each won the tournament twice, while Michigan State and Ohio State earned their first Big Ten Tournament title in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Indiana tied Purdue's 1998 squad as the lowest seed to win the event when the No. 5 Hoosiers defeated Penn State in the 2002 final for their lone title.
All-session ($65) and single-session ($12-16) tickets for the 2008 Big Ten Women 's Basketball Tournament presented by Xbox 360 Live are still available and can be purchased at all Ticketmaster outlets, including the Conseco Fieldhouse box office, Ticketmaster charge-by-phone numbers and www.ticketmaster.com.
