On, Wisconsin! Badgers basketball has come a long way – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Indianapolis — The University of Kentucky probably has the finest collection of individual talent in college basketball, but Wisconsin, it now can be said unequivocally, has the better team.
The composed, resilient, never-say-die Badgers outscored the supposedly unbeatable Wildcats, 15-4, over the last 4 1/2 minutes and won, 71-64, in the NCAA Tournament semifinals at Lucas Oil Stadium on Saturday night.
The victory ended Kentucky’s bid for the first 40-0 season in Division I history — the Wildcats finished 38-1 — and put Wisconsin (36-3) in the national championship game for the first time in 74 years.
The Badgers will play Duke (34-4) for the title Monday night (8:18 p.m., CBS).
“I think people believed that we could do it, but there’s a difference between believing you can do it and believing that you will do it,” said UW senior guard Josh Gasser. “For me, personally, I truly believed we were going to win this game. I truly believed we were going to win the Big Ten. I truly believed we were going to get to the national championship game.
“And I truly believe we’re going to win it.”
A program maligned for decades — before Stu Jackson restored competitiveness, Dick Bennett restored toughness and Bo Ryan took it to another level — is one step away from its first NCAA title since 1941.
Win or lose Monday, it is no stretch to say Wisconsin is home to one of the nation’s elite basketball programs.
The Badgers have made it to the NCAA Tournament in each of the last 17 seasons, the first three under Bennett, who reached the Final Four in 2000, and the last 14 under Ryan. It’s the fourth-longest streak in the country.
Before the streak started, Wisconsin had made it to the NCAA Tournament three times in 97 years.
“Just in general, to get back to the Final Four in back-to-back years is a phenomenal feat for any program, let alone for ours,” said Charlie Wills, who played on the 2000 Final Four team and is now a Madison-area real estate agent. “We’ve had a lot of success for 17 years; that’s now a tradition.”
Along the way, the Badgers have picked up some A-list celebrity fans, including Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and his girlfriend, actress Olivia Munn. J.J. Watt and Russell Wilson, former Wisconsin football players and now NFL stars, have attended games this year.
“Every year our guys kind of become the darlings of the tournament,” said Andy North, the two-time U.S. Open golf champion and one of Ryan’s best friends.
OK, Frank Kaminsky is no darling, but North’s point is well taken.
What’s not to like about these kids? They take the game seriously, but not themselves. They get on each other’s cases but not on each other’s nerves. They brag about their video game prowess but never their 20-point victories. They respect the game and their opponents.
“Have you ever seen my guys trash talk?” Ryan asked last week. “Have you ever seen my guys get technicals?”
No and no. And it goes back to Bo.
“He’s not out there going through all the gyrations and running up and down the court,” said Pat Richter, the retired UW athletic director who hired Ryan. “He sits there with his arms crossed and his players know what to do. If they make a couple mistakes, they sit down and that’s the way it is.”
The Kohl Center in Madison has become an impregnable fortress; the Badgers are 210-22 there under Ryan. It’s a far cry from the old days at the creaky, drafty UW Field House.
“I talk to people about the ’70s and ’80s and they talk about the ‘Faithful Five Thousand’ — maybe 5,000 fans would show up for a basketball game at the Field House,” Wills said. “Those teams were pretty bad.”
North grew up in Madison and remembers the tougher times.
“We went through a lot of years where we were always competitive, but we could never get to the next step,” he said. “We had a lot of good teams when I was a kid that would play their tails off and get beat by two.
“But the last 20 years have been something else.”
Ryan has done it by staying true to himself and his principles. What worked at UW-Platteville, where he won four Division III national titles, has worked at Wisconsin. It’s a simple formula, really: Don’t foul, share the ball and don’t turn it over, make your free throws and take high-percentage shots.
And he has done it mostly with players from the upper Midwest.
“I’ve always felt that Wisconsin was more of a Division II, Division III state,” said former UW-Stevens Point coach Jack Bennett, who coached against Ryan in the ’90s. “There have been great players in the old (Wisconsin State University Conference), now the (Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference), and the private schools.
“What has happened now is Wisconsin has established itself as one of the top Division I programs. Al (McGuire) certainly did that at Marquette, but Bo has done it with upper Midwest kids. That’s not to say he wouldn’t take someone from another part of the country. But I don’t think you can overestimate what it means to mesh system with the type of player you want.”
UW’s basketball team now can take its place alongside the school’s football team, which was moribund until Barry Alvarez arrived in 1990, established an identity with a power running game and won the Rose Bowl three times.
“Sure, I think back-to-back Final Fours tells you that,” said Alvarez, now Wisconsin’s athletic director. “It speaks to the strength of the program and how things are done at Wisconsin.”
Since the start of the 1996 season, UW’s football and men’s basketball teams have combined for more bowl appearances and NCAA Tournament appearances than any other school in the country.
This year, Wisconsin, Michigan State and UCLA are the only programs to win January bowl games and advance to the Sweet 16.
Alvarez said the success of the football team has a positive impact on the basketball program, and vice versa.
“I think more than anything else it’s the perception,” he said. “When you walk into homes to recruit kids, they know about the success you’ve had. Kids want to go to a place where they know they’re going to win.”
Still, Richter is amazed at the level of success Ryan has been able to achieve.
“What Bo has done in the Big Ten, there’s no way you thought that would have happened,” Richter said. “It’s kind of outstripped what we’ve done in football, which is hard to believe. It’s really phenomenal.”
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