MADISON, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin won’t be the outright Big Ten regular season champions in 2019-20, but the Badgers will be the No.1 seed in next week’s conference tournament.

By virtue of Maryland beating Michigan to give themselves a piece of the regular-season title, the Badgers are guaranteed to be the top seed and will open play Friday morning at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. UW will play the winner of Rutgers and Michigan.

Wisconsin beat Maryland, 56-54, on Jan.14 in the only meeting between the two teams during the regular season, giving the Badgers the head-to-head tiebreaker. Even if Michigan State beats Ohio State later Sunday to make it a three-way share of the title, the Badgers have the best round-robin record against the other two schools after splitting the season series with the Spartans. UW's 64-63 victory over the Spartans Feb.1 was the start of UW winning nine of its 10 games during the second half of the conference season.

It’s the fifth time in program history the Badgers have been the top overall seed since the conference began the postseason tournament in 1998. After losing their opening game in 2002 and 2003 as the No.1 seed, Wisconsin won the tournament as the No.1 seed in 2008 and 2015.

UW won the program’s 19th regular season conference championship on Saturday after beating Indiana, 60-54, as Assembly Hall. It was the eighth straight victory for the Badgers, who came back from nine points down in the second half.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, and I don’t know if I ever had a team who had to endure more, fight through more – and I’m not talking about the last seven minutes, I’m talking about what they’ve seen for the last nine months,” head coach Greg Gard said. “That last seven minutes was kind of a microcosm of what we’ve gone through to fight uphill and find a way to battle back.”

“This has been unbelievable, just the guts, the heart, the toughness of this group, how they’ve matured, (what) they didn’t have in November they have in March.”