Parity is becoming more and more the rule in sports, but not in Big Ten basketball.

When the conference begins tournament play Thursday, it will showcase an unusual paradox: a crop of teams deemed poor by Big Ten standards, even as they feature two of the top teams in the country.

For the two at the top, the tournament is about No. 1 seeds and tournament mindsets. For everyone else, the entire season rides on one long weekend in Chicago.

“It’s always an exciting time of year,” Michigan coach Tommy Amaker said. “It gives everybody hope.”

At the top of the conference, Ohio State and Wisconsin boast remarkable resumes: combining to win 54 games, featuring two of the premiere players in the country and each claiming the top spot in Week 16’s national polls – the Badgers No. 1 in the AP and the Buckeyes No. 1 in the coaches’ poll.

As the undisputed elite of the conference, both teams could be excused if they look ahead to next week’s more glamorous tournament. But neither team has locked up a No. 1 seed in the NCAA draw, and Ohio State coach Thad Matta brushed aside the idea that the conference champion Buckeyes would be better off losing early to avoid fatigue.

“I think as you go into it you worry about that, but when you get there your competitive instincts kind of take over,” Matta said. “When you get there, it’s another game, and as players and coaches, that’s what we love.”

If the Buckeyes and Badgers meet in the finals, it will be the third match-up between the two teams and their marquee players. Wisconsin and senior forward Alando Tucker took the first meeting in Madison, Wisc., and the Buckeyes and freshman center Greg Oden responded in Columbus, Ohio, in late February.

The two stars epitomize their respective squads. Tucker is a do-everything senior, a candidate for national Player of the Year, leading a veteran team that has improved every season. Oden is an intimidating freshman phenom that could be NBA-bound after this year, playing in the center of an elite group of youngsters. Conventional wisdom favors the experienced team, but Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan dismissed the idea that the Buckeyes would struggle with the tournament atmosphere.

“Nowadays with as many games as teams are playing . I think a young team is better prepared than they used to be,” Ryan said. “Sometimes a young team, they’ll just go out and play like they’ve always been playing. I think younger teams play looser.”

In recent weeks, the Buckeyes and Badgers have shown weaknesses against the Big Ten’s lesser competition. The Badgers lost to Michigan State on the road and narrowly avoided another defeat to the Spartans in Madison. The Buckeyes nearly lost to Penn State twice in the span of a week, then barely escaped in Ann Arbor, Mich., with a win over Michigan.

Those near-misses could encourage the rest of the Big Ten, which has six teams within two games of one another and eying NCAA berths. Illinois coach Bruce Weber said the gap between the top teams and the rest of the pack has narrowed since the beginning of the year, leaving teams like the Illini, Wolverines, Spartans, Hawkeyes, Hoosiers or Boilermakers with a shot at the tournament title. Only twice in nine years has the top seed gone on to win the tournament, and three teams seeded below the top five have reached the finals.

With so many teams bunched together in the middle of the pack, the Big Ten’s at-large bids are somewhat up in the air. Some experts have predicted that the conference will receive as few as four, while Weber said he expects six or seven. A lot will depend on what happens in other conference tournaments, where lesser teams could steal automatic bids.

With an automatic bid of their own at stake, the Big Ten teams in the middle of the pack will all be looking to take their fate out of the selection committee’s hands.

“(The other coaches) are telling their teams the same things I’m telling my team,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “Let’s not talk our way into the tournament, let’s play our way into the tournament.”