Over the past 25 years, eight Big Ten schools have been crowned conference champions, led by Ohio State (9), Iowa (8), Purdue (7) and Penn State (5). Michigan State has won twice, while Illinois, Indiana and Northwestern have all won the league title once. Ohio State and Iowa dominated from the beginning and into the mid-1990s, winning a combined 12 of the first 16 conference championships. On three occasions (1987, 1989, 1993), the two teams shared the Big Ten crown. And while the Buckeyes have captured the past two titles, sharing with Michigan State in 2005 and winning outright in 2006, the past 10 years has seen Penn State and Purdue reign supreme in the league.
After the inception into the conference in 1991-92, Penn State would share the league title with Purdue during the 1994 and 1995 seasons. The Lady Lions also captured the conference's first two Big Ten Tournament championships in 1995 and 1996. Over an 11-year span from 1994-2004, the league crown was either shared or won outright by Penn State or Purdue an impressive nine times, including a streak of six seasons from 1999-2004. The Boilermakers dominated the Big Ten Tournament scene, winning five titles, including three-straight from 1998-2000 and back-to-back crowns in 2003 and 2004. Iowa and Penn State have each captured two postseason titles, while Indiana, Michigan State and Ohio State have each claimed one.
The Big Ten has also proven to be one of the nation's top attendance leaders, as it held the country's best mark for seven-straight years (1993-99) and has been ranked second for the past seven (2000-06). In 2005, Ohio State clinched a share of the conference championship by defeating Penn State in front of a sellout and league-record 17,525 fans. The Big Ten has also seen impressive attendance marks with its postseason tournament, having set records for total attendance (37,635), single-session (9,417) and session average (7,527) in 2004, only to eclipse the total (38,638) and session average (7,728) marks in 2006.
The conference has seen three mentors named National Coach of the Year on five occasions, including former Iowa head coach C. Vivian Stringer (1988, 1993) and Penn State's Rene Portland (1991, 2004). Michigan State's Joanne P. McCallie made it back-to-back honors for Big Ten mentors when she was honored in 2005 for taking her Spartans to NCAA Championship final, which marked the Big Ten's fifth Final Four team in seven years. The span was highlighted by Carolyn Peck's 1999 Purdue squad that claimed the league's lone national championship.
In addition, three conference student-athletes have been recognized as National Player of the Year in Iowa's Michelle Edwards (1988), Minnesota's Carol Ann Shudlick (1994) and Purdue's Stephanie White (1999). White (1999), along with Boilermakers Joy Holmes (1991-co), MaChelle Joseph (1992) and Katie Douglas (2001), join Penn State's Kelly Mazzante (2004) as basketball standouts who have won the coveted Big Ten Suzy Favor Female Athlete of the Year award. Also, well over 50 student-athletes have continued their careers in the WNBA, including Minnesota's Janel McCarville, who was the top overall pick in the 2005 WNBA Draft.
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