While at Big Ten Basketball Media Day on Thursday, I walked around the mammoth Hyatt Regency O’Hare in search of some nuggets for a Media Day Notebook.See what I came up with from the event that issued more than 300 credentials, a figure Big Ten officials said was “the most in recent memory.”

The anticipation for the Big Ten basketball season is tangible for a league that looks like it may be the best in America. Five schools appear in most every significant preseason poll. Indiana leads the way, ranking No. 1 in the USA Today poll, Sporting News poll and Athlon poll, among others. Ohio State and Michigan show up in several top fives, while Michigan State and Wisconsin also are ranked in most polls.

During Thursday’s Big Ten Basketball Media Day, first-year Nebraska men’s basketball coach Tim Miles had a playful moment with the press. He took out his phone and took a panoramic photo of the media in the room, then posted it to the Internet via his Twitter account @CoachMiles. See the picture and the tweet in the rest of this post.

During Thursday’s Big Ten Basketball Media Day, I went around and asked one player from all 12 teams the following questions: 1. Toughest Big Ten road venue? 2. Favorite Big Ten player to watch? 3. Best Big Ten uniform? 4. Favorite Big Ten road trip? The players’ answers were anonymous, and the only rule was that they couldn’t use their school for any answer. See the winners, plus a couple sample quotes, in this post.

We’ll update this post throughout the morning with tidbits from Big Ten Basketball Media Day. It may not be a surprise to hear that the media picked Indiana’s Cody Zeller as the preseason Player of the Year and that Indiana is their choice to win it all. Penn State is picked to win the women’s title and Penn State’s Alex Bentley Ohio State’s Tayler Hill shared the Player of the Year pick.

It’s Big Ten Basketball Media Day and here are my various preseason picks. My colleague and BTN.com web editor Brent Yarina posted his selections over here.

As BTN.com editor I watch a lot of Big Ten basketball each season. Here are my selections from Big Ten Basketball Media Day. Our senior writer Tom Dienhart posted his similar list over here. Compare and contrast, and leave your selections at the bottom of my post. I’m sure fans have differing views.

Isn’t late July great? Football is in the air, with kickoff a little more than a month away, and all the teams – even the perennial cellar dwellers – are tied for first place. Coincidentally, when coaches descend upon media days, everyone’s very excited. The Big Ten is no exception. According to The Wall Street Journal, Big Ten coaches uttered some form of the word “excited” 43 times during Thursday’s question-and-answer session at Big Ten Media Days. See who used “excited” the most in this post.

We capped off our coverage of the two-day Big Ten Media and Kickoff Luncheon with the 90-minute TV show Big Ten Football Kickoff Luncheon Special, with Dave Revsine, Gerry DiNardo and Howard Griffith. It included various interviews and analysis from the event in Chicago. Watch a number of video clips from that Friday night show in this post.

Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson spoke to Friday’s Big Ten Kickoff Luncheon crowd, and you can watch his speech right here in this post. People attending the luncheon quickly turned to Twitter and applauded Robinson’s performance.

Bill O’Brien created quite the stir when he hinted at possible Penn State uniform changes during Thursday’s first session of Big Ten Media Days. With the recent changes going on at Penn State, it seems plausible that the team would entertain such a decision.

Like his teammates and rivals in attendance at Big Ten Media Days on Friday, Minnesota linebacker Keanon Cooper was dressed to the nines. It’s a safe bet he was the only one doing so in his grandfather’s threads, though.

Michael Mauti looks like he’s ready to hit somebody or something. The Penn State linebacker sports slicked back hair that covers his neck, his suit coat pulled tight across his arms and shoulders as he leans forward answering questions and staring at a water bottle in front of him. They are tough questions about teammates transferring, and Mauti speaks with passion. He speaks from the heart. It’s refreshing.

Don’t envy everything about Wisconsin’s Ricky Wagner. Yes, the left tackle is one of the Badgers’ perennial can’t-miss Big Uglies, but he and the rest of the Big Ten offensive linemen have their work cut out for them in 2012.

We posted all available video from Thursday press conferences and now present the entire collection to in this post. It includes all 12 football coaches talking about their football teams and taking questions from reporters. Don’t forget: BTN airs a 90-minute Big Ten Football Kickoff Luncheon Special at 8 p.m. ET, hosted by Dave Revsine, with analysis from BTN’s Gerry DiNardo and Howard Griffith. Watch it live on BTN/BTN2Go.