MINNEAPOLIS — After a very uneventful three days, the Big Ten tournament might’ve provided the best game of conference tournament week.

Wisconsin’s 76-75 overtime upset of No. 1 seed Purdue in a semifinal Saturday ended with an energized Target Center on its feet and the Badgers rushing the floor in ecstasy, celebrating both Max Klesmit’s game-winner with five seconds left and a continued postseason rebirth just across the border.

The Badgers slogged here, dropping eight of their last 11 games, including a road loss at Purdue that concluded the regular season. Beginning with a second-round whipping of Maryland on Thursday, it’s been a different group, and the result against the Boilermakers just underlined that.

Purdue finished with a plus-14 rebounding edge and a 24-5 advantage in points from the free-throw line, and Zach Edey managed to foul out three different Wisconsin big men, but the Badgers lingered. It helped that Edey missed huge amounts of the first half after picking up a personal foul and a technical foul barely two minutes in, but the Big Ten Player of the Year didn’t have any limits after the break. And it wasn’t Edey making the bigger plays.

Edey, in fact, missed a free shot with six seconds left in regulation that would’ve pushed Purdue’s lead to three. On the subsequent possession, Wisconsin guard Chucky Hepburn was able to beat Purdue’s Braden Smith off the bounce and hit a buzzer-beating layup to send the game to overtime. In the extra session, a tie-breaking three-point play from Edey with 46 seconds left was trumped by another Hepburn drive on the other end, an offensive foul from Smith, and then Klesmit slicing into the lane and getting the go-ahead bucket to drop.

It’s another sour March note for Purdue, which has carried a defeat to No. 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson in last year’s NCAA Tournament throughout this season, on top of a handful of previous upsets by double-digit seeds in recent years. The Boilermakers will still be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and almost assuredly travel a very favorable course through Indianapolis and Detroit in their pursuit of a Final Four appearance. We’ll see if the hurt from this remains or acts as fire. Anatomy of an upset: How FDU called its shot and beat No. 1 seed Purdue

Purdue’s loss to Wisconsin in the Big Ten playoffs should cement Houston as the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, at least until the Cougars play later Saturday night against Iowa State in the Big 12 tournament.

Purdue was the selection committee’s choice for No. 1 overall in the top-16 seed reveal on Feb. 17 and still has the best collection of nonconference wins of any No. 1 seed contender. But one could make an exceedingly good case that Houston deserved No. 1 overall even before Saturday. The Cougars entered the day ranked No. 1 in the NET, KenPom, BPI, and SOR. Only a No. 2 position in BPI prevented a clean sweep of the measurements. Houston’s plus-33.83 adjusted efficiency margin on KenPom would rank among the top five teams in the KenPom era if it finishes there. The Cougars’ 16 Quad 1 wins are the most in the country, and they earned the regular-season crown of statistically the greatest league in the country.