By the time Wisconsin fans stormed the floor Wednesday night, the Big Ten's first-ever win vs. the ACC in its annual Challenge was all but over. Ohio State was minutes away from completing a blowout victory against Florida State, which clinched it, 6-5, for the Big Ten.

Much Midwest ensued. It's not every day you end a 10-year drought. Even the Wonk even made a brief appearance.

Charlie Neibergall/AP

Malcolm Delaney helped the Hokies beat Iowa, then rooted for Duke.

But if you think it was just fans reveling, think again. This mattered to the players, too.

From FOXSports.com's Jeff Goodman, players from the ACC and Big Ten were rooting for rivals and checking scores, all in the name of bragging rights.

"We were rooting real hard for all of our teams. It's good for our conference," said Purdue's Robbie Hummel, whose team slugged its way past Wake Forest on Tuesday. "It's huge because it got old. Everyone always says the ACC is better and there are years when that's true, but I think we showed how deep the Big Ten is this year."

He spent Wednesday following Illinois, Ohio State, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, most of whom played in tight, entertaining games.

Virginia Tech's Malcolm Delaney, who helped the Hokies beat Iowa on Tuesday, was the same way. But he even went one further.

"It's definitely been on my mind," Delaney said. "I even wanted Duke to win."

That's what you call conference pride. A Hokie rooting for the Blue Devils is like the Yankees cheering for the Red Sox in the World Series or a Packers fan hoping Brett Favre leads the Vikings to the Super Bowl. Doesn't happen. (Then again, not every ACC player was sad to see the Devils lose. Marcus Ginyard tweeted that if "Duke loses, we all win…" so it wasn't exactly universal.)

But hey, that's how it goes with this event. There's no trophy presented, no plaque commemorating the win. Just bragging rights, pure and simple. Never underestimate how important pride is to an athlete.

BP's John Gasaway (the aforementioned Wonk), did a rundown of Wednesday's games in his usual insightful style, with some special props paid to Illinois' comeback, the scoring excellence of Kyle Singler and Andre Dawkins and the coaching brilliance of Bo Ryan. All good stuff.

More nuggets?

• The Illini did indeed trail by 23 points 45 seconds into the second half. But that underplays how impressive the comeback was. With barely 3 minutes gone, they still trailed 57-35 (22 points). Yet 8 minutes later, Illinois grabbed a 63-61 lead. Yes, that's a 28-4 run. Kansas wasn't the only team making a run for the ages last night.
• Singler and Dawkins combined for 40 of Duke's 69 points on 14-of-21 shooting. The rest of the Devils were 10 of 32. No sign of Jon Scheyer, while Nolan Smith clunked 12 of 17 shots. That's gonna be an issue.
• Best offensive performance by a team? Virginia Tech, which notched a 118.8 off rating on kenpom.com. Wake was the worst (76.7.)
• The Demon Deacons also had the worst eFG% (35.2), while North Carolina was the best at 62.3.
• Top offensive performance by a losing team: Clemson (109.4), while Purdue was the worst among the winners (91.2). Remind me to never watch a replay of the Boilermakers vs. Wake. Yuck.
• The fastest game of the bunch was – no surprise – UNC's win vs. Michigan State, which had 78 possessions. Right behind was Purdue-Wake (76 possessions; fast and ugly) and Maryland-Indiana (76).

So there you. The Big Ten won. Life will never be the same again.

Mike Miller's random thoughts also can found on Twitter (@BeyndArcMMiller).