Chicago ? It is celebration time in Champaign, Ill., and a bit of revelry is a release Illinois surely deserves. It is no easy feat in this age of endless parity to run off 10 straight wins and walk off with the Big Ten Conference’s regular-season title.

But with the conference tournament set to open Thursday in Indianapolis, the Illini should be fairly warned. That No. 1 next to their name means very little, if anything at all.

Only once in the previous six tourneys has the top seed emerged as champion. That happened in 1999 and Michigan State went on to the Final Four, where it fell to Duke in a national semifinal.

The rest? The top-seeded Spartans lost their opening game in 1998 and top-seeded Ohio State did the same in 2000. The Illini also were top-seeded in 2001 and reached the semifinals before falling to No. 4 Indiana, but in each of the last two seasons, top-seeded Wisconsin lost its opening game–to No. 9 Iowa in 2002 and to No. 8 Ohio State last year.

Four times in the last six seasons the top seed fell its first time out, and if that isn’t warning enough for the Illini, there also is this: The No. 1 seed’s all-time record in the Big Ten tournament is an unsightly 4-5.

“What we’ve tried to do is talk about the big picture, about seeding (in the NCAA Tournament), about how important it is to continue doing what we’ve done down the stretch,” Illinois coach Bruce Weber said when asked about his team’s motivation heading into Indianapolis. “We try to emphasize to the players that it’s important for us to finish what we’ve started.”

More from the History Channel: The No. 2 seed has won three of the six previous tournaments and has the best overall record (11-3). This year the No. 3 slot belongs to Wisconsin.

The other two titles have been won by a No. 4 seed (Michigan in ’98) and a No. 6 seed (Iowa in ’01). This year those slots belong to the Hawkeyes and Northwestern.

The Wildcats, who need two wins to be eligible for an NIT bid, can take comfort in the fact that the overall record of the No. 6 seed is 10-4, which is second best of all the seeds.

The defiant ones: The Big Ten never has failed to land fewer than five teams in the NCAA Tournament since the field expanded to 64 in 1985. But this Sunday, just three years after receiving seven invites, it may get only three berths and surely will get no more than four.

That is a measure of how far perceptions of the league have fallen. That has raised the ire of some Big Ten coaches.

“I still think five or six teams is realistic,” Purdue’s Gene Keady said, not very realistically.

“I think Purdue, Michigan and Iowa have great chances,” said Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, whose Spartans are sure to get in along with Illinois and Wisconsin. “I’m so tired of hearing about other leagues and what they’ve done. Take Conference USA, which I think is a very good league.

“But people act like we’re stepchildren to some of these other leagues. That’s ridiculous. We don’t get credit for beating DePaul, which is leading that league. That’s says it all.”

Illinois also beat Memphis, which shared the C-USA title with DePaul. But the Illini also lost to North Carolina and Providence, the Badgers lost to Maryland and Alabama, and the Spartans, who began the season ranked among the top five nationally, lost to every highly ranked opponent they played in a suicidal non-conference schedule.