Big Ten's big boppers — Michigan, Nebraska, Michigan State and Illinois — enter the postseason chat on Friday

The Big Ten men’s basketball tournament lumbered on Thursday, the third day of the league’s first-ever six-day, 18-team postseason spectacle, all of it at the United Center.

On Day 3, a whopping 12 teams remained in the picture. Was this a conference tournament or a race for one of the area’s open Congressional seats?

But that’s life in the largest conference in the land. And for March Madness lovers, life is about to get a lot better on Friday, when the Big Ten’s top four seeds make their first appearances and the postseason begins cooking with grease on the West Side.

The Big Ten also is the only conference in college basketball with four teams ranked among the top 11 in the country. Top-seeded Michigan is a 29-2 monster that won 19 of 20 league games. The next three, in order — Nebraska (26-5), Michigan State (25-6) and Illinois (24-7) — each finished 15-5 in league play.

But it’s Michigan that will strut into the UC with even odds to cut down the nets on Sunday and the best odds of any team, anywhere, to win the national championship. It would be the Big Ten’s first since Michigan State went all the way in 2000.

“We’ve heard a lot about this [superteam],” Wolverines coach Dusty May said. “As a staff, we felt like we had a superteam. …

“These guys, because they’re super teammates, they’ve become a superteam. Our secret sauce is how great of teammates these guys are, period.”

Having the Big Ten’s best player, Yaxel Lendeborg, and its most intimidating frontcourt — Lendeborg, 7-3 Aday Mara and bruising Illinois transfer Morez Johnson Jr. — probably thickens that sauce at least a little.

The Wolverines will face No. 8 seed Ohio State in an 11 a.m. quarterfinal, followed by Illinois against No. 5 Wisconsin in an up-for-grabs matchup at approximately 1:30. The evening session, beginning at 5:30, will pit Nebraska against Purdue in a rare case when a 2 seed is kind of an aw-shucks underdog against a 7 seed. Michigan State will get No. 6 seed UCLA or No. 14 seed Rutgers in the finale.

MSU has won the most Big Ten tournaments — six out of 28 — and seems to have a special motivation coming in after Michigan fans taunted the Spartans last weekend as the “little brother” of the state.

“I’m nobody’s damn little brother,” Spartans coach Tom Izzo said after losing that hotly contested rivalry battle, “and neither is my team.”

Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg, the former Bulls player and coach, remains one of the best stories in college basketball along with the surprisingly outstanding team from Lincoln. Hoiberg was born there. His mother grew up there, and both parents attended Nebraska. One of his grandfathers taught sociology at the school for 30 years, and the other was the basketball coach in the 1950s and ’60s. Hoiberg’s son, Sam, is a key player on this team, and a contract extension through 2032 means Sam’s old man is simply crushing it.

Betting sites have the Huskers as a bigger longshot than Michigan, Illinois, Michigan State or Purdue (which beat Northwestern 81-68 in the third round) to win this tournament, but Hoiberg is smelling opportunity.

“I’m really confident in this group,” he said.

And then there are the Illini, who lost to Wisconsin in overtime in Champaign in the teams’ only meeting. The Illini also lost in overtime to both MSU and UCLA during a 4-4 closing stretch that also included a loss in which they were manhandled by Michigan.

Badgers guards Nick Boyd and Blackwell went off for a combined 49 points against the Illini and topped that with a combined 57 in a third-round win against Washington. Defensively, the Illini have struggled against athletic guards all season. Some close games have gotten away, too, though coach Brad Underwood oddly took offense to a local beat writer’s question about that after the regular-season finale.

Underwood’s tone was different before heading up I-57.

“We’ve got to have a carefree mindset and know that we’re a good basketball team, but we want to be the toughest, hardest-playing team out there every night,” he said. “If we do that, we give ourselves a chance.”