This was the eighteenth annual Big Ten tournament and was the first tournament to feature 14 teams of the expanded Big Ten to include Maryland and Rutgers.
As a result, Wisconsin received the Big Ten's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
All 14 Big Ten schools participated in the tournament.
Teams were seeded by conference record, with a tiebreaker system used to seed teams with identical conference records.
Seeding for the tournament was determined at the close of the regular conference season.