Category: Badgers

Gary D’Amato starts our Sweet 16 trip today:

The day before the University of Wisconsin played Pittsburgh in the NCAA Tournament, Nigel Hayes ran into Michigan State coach Tom Izzo near the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

Hayes, the Badgers’ starting forward, asked Izzo what made the Spartans so good in March.

“Izzo told him it was the winning culture of their program,” UW guard Bronson Koenig said Tuesday. “It’s their (former players) calling their current guys and saying, ‘OK, it’s March. We’re going to do what Michigan State always does in March, and that’s win.’”

It’s impossible to quantify the value of a winning culture and how it fosters confidence in players, but it’s at least as important as solid fundamentals and maybe even talent.

“I would say,” Koenig said, “it’s THE most important thing.”

Like the Spartans, the Badgers have built a winning tradition on a foundation of 18 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances and back-to-back Final Fours. When a program wins year after year, players develop a healthy conceit about success: We’re supposed to win, and we’ll find a way.

It helps to explain how Wisconsin is an incredible 138-5 over the last six years when leading or tied for the lead with 5 minutes left. This year, the Badgers are 21-1 in such games, the only blemish being an early-season loss to UW-Milwaukee.

“It’s a ridiculous winning percentage in those situations,” said Badgers assistant coach Lamont Paris. “It’s not chance. The other team has just as many chances to make those plays.”

It also helps to explain how Koenig just knew his step-back three-pointer off one leg from the corner against Xavier was going to go in before the ball even left his hand. It did, beating the buzzer and sending the Badgers to the Sweet 16 and a date with Notre Dame on Friday.

In crunch time, the Badgers have an unshakeable belief that they’re going to come out on top. It doesn’t always work out that way, of course, but it’s a quality that tips the odds in their favor.

“I think that’s why some teams that have struggled historically have a hard time getting over the hump,” Paris said. “I think a lot of times people think it’s purely talent: ‘If we get more talent, we’ll win more games.’ There is a correlation, don’t get me wrong. But as you win and you know that you can perform, I think you develop a belief that affects how you play down the stretch of a game.”

When things looked bleak against Pittsburgh and Xavier, the Badgers found a way to win. Koenig couldn’t buy a basket against Pitt but against Xavier he made a pair of three-pointers in the last 12 seconds — the first to tie, the second to win.

Only a player with a massive amount of confidence can go from ice cold to coldblooded in a span of two days.

“If you believe in yourself,” Koenig said, “your shots are going to go in.”

When younger teammates see that kind of self-assurance, it can’t help but rub off. Koenig and Hayes saw it in Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker; now, young teammates see it in them.

“From the bench, guys see, ‘Wow, these guys are making plays at (crunch) time. That’s what Badgers do,’” Paris said. “You’re not going to win every single one of them, but these guys really and truly think that they’re going to find a way to come out on top.”

By definition, Division I athletes are confident people. But there is a difference between confidence and a deep-seated belief that you’re going to make a play and that your team is going to win. The former can be broken, but not the latter.

“It’s true belief,” Paris said. “It’s not false confidence, which I think is another ball of wax. You’re the only one who knows in your brain what you really believe. No one else knows that. I think a lot of people don’t have true confidence. They’re going to tell you they’re confident. But to have true confidence is not that common.”

Speaking of not that common, there is Virginia coach and UW-Green Bay grad Tony Bennett, profiled a year ago by the Washington Post:

Tony Bennett had just become Virginia’s men’s basketball coach in 2009 when he visited guard Jontel Evans at his Hampton, Va., home and laid out his blueprint for the program. Evans had committed to Virginia’s previous coaching staff, so Bennett now had to re-recruit him.

His eyes lit up when he told Evans about the defense the Cavaliers would play. Evans said Bennett talked about recruiting under-the-radar players and developing them. The Cavaliers wouldn’t win because they were the most talented, but because they played as a team.

Bennett said one more thing to Evans as he was in the doorway and about to leave: “Live by faith, and not by sight.”

“Me and my mother looked at each other, and I was just like, ‘That’s really kind of deep, I’ve never heard it before,’ ” Evans said. “That’s what sold me. After that, I was like, ‘I want to play for this guy.’ ”

Bennett didn’t take shortcuts as he guided the Cavaliers to the top of college basketball, and he’s stayed true to his system as he tries to keep them there. He prefers blue-collar players over blue-chip recruits, with a style of play to match. …

Had Bennett been less experienced by the time he arrived at Virginia, he said he might have tried to recruit more junior college players when the wins didn’t come quickly. Maybe he would’ve changed his deliberately slower style of play when it was criticized for being boring.

But Bennett had played for his father, Dick Bennett, at Wisconsin-Green Bay and witnessed the same system work there and again later at a power-conference school, Wisconsin. When Tony Bennett got his first head coaching job, at Washington State, that system resulted in the most wins over any three-year period in program history. He figured patience would eventually produce the same results at Virginia even after the Cavaliers missed the NCAA tournament in his first two seasons.

“When you come in and you’re trying to establish a new program and a new system, you have to get the right kind of guys, but then it’s not quick-fix stuff,” Bennett said. “There’s kind of a process you have to go through, and you can’t short cut certain things. If you try to, it may give you a little bit of a spike or a blip on the radar, but it usually ends up hurting you.”

Some teams get those instant results by recruiting stars or “one-and-done” players who leave school for the NBA after one college season, but Bennett would’ve struggled luring a player of that caliber to Charlottesville early in his tenure. When he approached Ritchie McKay about joining his staff as associate head coach at Virginia, Bennett had a different vision, telling McKay he wanted to build a program that could compete at the highest level with high-character players.

Bennett put the program’s biblically-derived five pillars — humility, passion, unity, servanthood and thankfulness — on the wall of the locker room. The pillars were a creation of Dick Bennett, who once told McKay, a longtime friend, that he would “recruit to the pillars, hire from the pillars, make decisions and try to model his life after the pillars,” McKay said. Virginia players said the pillars are discussed and applied for basketball every day.

Bennett’s vision hit a speed bump when four of the six members of his first six-man recruiting class transferred. The Cavaliers were 31-31 after Bennett’s first two seasons, and Evans remembers Bennett telling the team that “a house divided cannot stand,” a reference to Mark 3:25, as a way to stress the importance of uniting.

“You’ve got to get a group of guys you can lose with first before you win,” Bennett said. “You’re going to go through tough losses, and it’s going to be hard, so you want the guys that will stay together and stay with it when it’s rocky and there’s some hard things. You learn from all that, and then as they mature, boy, there’s a chance for you to turn it around and taste success.” …

McKay said he doesn’t look at prospects’ national rankings when recruiting, but rather he evaluates them based on whether they would be a good fit for Bennett’s system, from an athletic standpoint and a willingness to be coached. Prioritizing defense is ingrained in early conversations with recruits.

Bennett can been turned off by a highly rated player if he senses entitlement. While some coaches promise playing time during the recruiting process, Bennett instead paints a bleak picture, as he only guarantees players an opportunity to earn minutes and candidly outlines their role on the team. Bennett said he looks for “blue-collar” players because the Cavaliers are that kind of program. Just one player who has committed to Virginia’s 2016 recruiting class, shooting guard Kyle Guy, is rated in ESPN’s top 50 for the class.

“We’re not a team that can go out and just get one and dones like Kentucky,” Bennett said. “Even if you can get those, it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take one, but you better be able to back it up with another one and another one because all of those things create gaps in your program.”

Gill said Bennett frequently references 1 Corinthians 9:24: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”

Gill said the Cavaliers have embraced that verse from a basketball standpoint, doing what’s necessary for the prize at the end of the season. But for Bennett, it’s an ongoing marathon.

“If we were fortunate enough to keep having success and all of a sudden we changed totally the kind of young men we brought in or went in a different direction, that would be a big mistake,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get more and more fortunate and find talented guys who have all of those attributes and are willing to keep building it, but it should definitely not change as long as I’m at the helm.”

Those of us who are old enough to remember when Wisconsin played in neither football bowl games nor NCAA basketball tournaments may find this hard to believe:

The streak continues today against Pittsburgh in St. Louis at 5:50 p.m. on TNT.

Badgers radio announcer Matt Lepay has called every single NCAA tournament game dating back to 1994. So is this just another game for him?

It never comes close to getting old.

It’s March, and once again, the Badgers are headed to the NCAA tournament. For the 18th-straight year.

In other words, the streak began the same year your average college freshman was born.

For the record, this is the fourth-longest active tournament run in major college basketball, and it is the fifth-longest stretch in history.

Not bad for a program that once went 47 years between trips.

For someone a little older, yours truly, I will always have a soft spot for a couple of Badgers teams. The 1988-89 group that made the NIT (which was the school’s first postseason bid since 1947), and the 1993-94 squad that earned the long-awaited invite to the Big Dance.

Howard Moore could tell you all you need to know about the ’94 Badgers. The current assistant was a member of that Stu Jackson-coached squad. We actually had a casual chat about it the other day. That team had an 8-10 Big Ten record, which was good for seventh place in a very tough league. An 11-0 start to the season was huge, as was an early March victory against third-ranked Michigan at the UW Field House.

It was heck of a year to be a Badgers fan. For the first time in school history, the football team won the Rose Bowl. A couple of months later, the basketball boys were dancing.

At the time, it was very fresh material.

I want to think about that now. Why? Because seeing your favorite teams win at such a high level is anything but a guarantee. Seeing those teams become annual participants in bowl games and postseason tournaments is something most of the rest of the world can just dream about.

Be proud. This is really good stuff. If you are in my age bracket, feel free to inform the young bucks that it wasn’t always this way. Some very good players never had the opportunity to experience performing on big stages. Some very loyal fans never had the chance to witness all of the fun.

But we get to see it. Again.

On Jan. 12, the Badgers lost at Northwestern. On the way back to Madison, I thought maybe it just wasn’t in the cards for this team, this year. Frankly, I was OK with it. I mean, 17 straight years in the NCAAs is one heck of a stretch. This group was going through a lot. Players from the Final Four years who moved on. A coach who retired in mid-December. A young team that split its first 18 games and dropped four of its first five in the Big Ten. We have been a bit spoiled, so maybe it was time for some harsh reality — that a season might conclude in the conference tournament.

It had to end sometime, right?

Just not this time. This team would have none of it. Simply put, the culture is too strong. This year’s Badgers had no intention of being that team. You know, the team that fell short of making the field.

The players and coaches deserve all the credit in the world. The streak is alive and well.

I will always remember the excitement of walking into the Dee Events Center in Ogden, Utah, for the Badgers’ first-round game with Cincinnati.

This week, your friendly broadcaster and part-time columnist is fortunate enough to experience his 20th NCAA tournament following the Badgers. When the travelling party walks into the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, that feeling of excitement will return.

It will return because this March Madness thing never comes close to getting old.

It might be getting old for some UW archrivals, which have not experienced anything close to the Badgers’ current success. Jason Gonzalez must have found this hard to write for the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

March has become a month when Wisconsin celebrates the muscle of its athletic department. The last 14 years the Badgers have played in a college football bowl game and then qualified for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. It is the longest streak in NCAA history.

The Wisconsin athletic department posted a graphic highlighting the streak to its Facebook page on Monday. The post recorded nearly 20,000 likes and received over 400 comments.

The run started in 2002-2003 and continued this year when Wisconsin football played in the Holiday Bowl followed by the men’s basketball team’s 18th straight NCAA tournament berth. The Badgers play Pittsburgh in the Round of 64 on Friday.

Since the start of the 1996 season, Wisconsin’s men’s basketball and football teams have combined for more bowl and NCAA tournament appearances than any other school. Each team has 19 postseason appearances for a total of 38.

Wisconsin passed Texas for longest streak, last season. Texas qualified for 12 straight bowls/NCAA tournaments from 1998-1999 to 2009-2010. Michigan State holds an active streak of nine consecutive years (2007-2008 to present). Florida also did it nine straight years (1998-1999 to 2006-2007). …

The last time the Gophers played in a bowl game and NCAA tournament in the same season was 2012-2013. The football team lost to Texas Tech 34-31 in the Car Care Bowl and the men’s basketball lost in the round of 32 before head coach Tubby Smith was fired.

The programs have qualified for a bowl and the NCAA tournament in back-to-back seasons (2008-2009 and 2009-2010) only once in school history.

The Badgers have fared much better. And we haven’t even mentioned the Green Bay Packers stretch of success over the past decade.

Wisconsin defeated Texas A&M–Corpus Christi 64–49 last night.

That wasn’t the news. This was, from Madison.com:

University of Wisconsin men’s basketball coach Bo Ryan announced his retirement following the Badgers’ 64-49 victory over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on Tuesday night.

About 20 minutes after the final buzzer, Ryan walked into the Kohl Center media room. An athletic department official announced Ryan would make an opening statement, something he almost never does.

Ryan went on to say that he would step aside immediately. UW associate head coach Greg Gard, Ryan’s longtime assistant, will take over the team on an interim basis and will coach his first game when the Badgers close non-conference play with a game against visiting UW-Green Bay on Dec. 23.

“It’s so emotional right now,” Ryan said. “And I’m trying to hold this together.”

Ryan ends his 32-career on the college level with a 747-233 record, including 364-130 at UW. He led the Badgers to at least a share of four Big Ten regular-season championships and three conference tournament titles.

The Badgers advanced to the NCAA tournament in each of Ryan’s first 14 seasons, with seven trips to the Sweet 16. UW entered this season coming off back-to-back Final Four appearances, including a loss to Duke in last season’s title game.

“His record speaks for itself,” UW athletic director Barry Alvarez said. “He’s a legend.”

Gard, who turned 45 earlier this month, has been an assistant under Ryan for more than two decades.

Ryan announced over the summer that this would be his 15^thand final season at UW, but he later said that might not be the case after all.

Ryan ended up emulating former UW coach Dick Bennett, who abruptly retired during the season following Bennett’s 2000 Final Four run. UW replaced Bennett with Brad Soderberg, who then was fired after the Badgers’ one-and-done NCAA run. (Soderberg was replaced by … Bo Ryan.) It’s also analogous to legendary North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith, who abruptly retired at the start of the 1997 reason, leaving North Carolina with no choice but to name his top assistant, Bill Guthridge, as coach.

It’s also analogous to legendary North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith, who abruptly retired at the start of the 1997 reason, leaving North Carolina with no choice but to name his top assistant, Bill Guthridge, as coach. Guthridge went to two Final Fours in three seasons. The most recent long-time coach to retire in-season is Jim Calhoun, who hung up the whistle in September 2012, leaving UConn no alternative but to name assistant Kevin Ollie. UConn won the national title in 2013, so those two moves worked out better than Soderberg, who was then fired after five seasons at Saint Louis. (Soderberg now is an assistant at Virginia, about which more shortly.)

Dan Dakich gave Ryan high praise when he named his own coach, Bob Knight, the most successful Big Ten coach, and Michigan State’s Tom Izzo the most successful post-Knight coach, but said Ryan did the “Best Job Ever Done at a School.” Like Bennett before him, Ryan maximized what he had, not only becoming the career win leader at UW, but improbably getting one team to a Final Four and last year’s team to the national championship game. Given Wisconsin’s long history of recruiting players no one has ever heard of, and players that don’t continue long in pro basketball, that’s remarkable.

Sports Illustrated’s Seth Davis adds:

Bo Ryan never did master the art of subtlety. When he had an opinion, he expressed it. When he developed a position, he stuck to it. When he faced criticism, he insisted he didn’t care. And when he believed something should happen, he did everything he could to make it so.

Last spring, in the wake of Wisconsin’s second consecutive run to the Final Four, Ryan, 67, decided he had had enough. He wanted to retire while he could still flirt with a single-digit handicap. Having decided it was time to walk away, Ryan knew exactly who he wanted to replace him: his assistant and friend for 23 years, Greg Gard.

Two developments, however, scuttled his plan. The first was the declining health of Gard’s father, Glen, who a few months before had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. With Gard devoting so much time and energy in helping his father’s fight, Ryan felt conflicted about whether he was ready to take the reins, especially considering the Badgers were facing a daunting rebuild.
The second development took Ryan off-guard. His athletic director, Barry Alvarez, balked at the idea of naming Gard the head-coach-in-waiting. He agreed Gard should be on the short list of candidates, but Alvarez wanted first to conduct a national search, one that would presumably also include Virginia coach Tony Bennett, who grew up in Wisconsin, played for Wisconsin-Green Bay and whose father, Dick, coached the Badgers for six years.

Perhaps Ryan anticipated Alvarez would go along with his plan because Alvarez executed a similar one when he stepped down as Wisconsin’s football coach in 2005. Alvarez had recently also taken on the title of AD, and he named then-defensive coordinator Bret Bielema the heir going into Alvarez’s final season. Having learned of Alvarez’s intentions, Ryan tried to hedge his bets. He put out a statement in June saying that he would coach one more year, and that he hoped Gard would succeed him.It only took 24 hours for Ryan to start backtracking. He was at a golf outing (naturally) and started jabbering with some reporters, and pretty soon he was reminding them that he hadn’t retired officially, and that he had a rollover five-year contract, and heck, maybe he would just keep right on coaching a few years more. He later insisted this did not contradict what he had said in his statement the day before. That was balderdash, of course, but there it was. When Bo said up was down, then by golly up was down.

Ryan’s congenial stubbornness is what made him an effective coach as well as a likable one. When you spoke with or interviewed Ryan, you always felt he was a little bit annoyed, but that he still enjoyed a healthy give-and-take. He was the last guy to leave a party, not because he was a big drinker, but because he loved to mix it up with the fellas. It was easy to see why his players tried so hard for him. He could bust their balls and still leave ’em laughing.

Ryan’s record at Wisconsin will not soon be matched. During his 14-plus years at the school, the Badgers never missed out on the NCAA tournament. Not once. This from a school that prior to Ryan’s arrival had played in a total of seven NCAA tournaments, and four in the previous 55 years. His teams also never finished lower than fourth in the Big Ten. He won with players who were not heavily recruited coming out of high school. That meant many stayed in Madison for four years and got a little bit better each season. It was not a common formula, but then again, Ryan is an uncommon man.

To be sure, each of those streaks was likely to be broken this season. Tuesday night’s win over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi only improved the team’s record to 7–5. (Wisconsin lost its previous game at home to in-state rival Marquette; you know Ryan would never have let that be his valedictory.) The Badgers have lost at home this season to Western Illinois and Milwaukee. Their best win, on Dec. 2 at Syracuse, was over a team in free fall. I’m sure it is tempting to get snarky and say Ryan is leaving because he couldn’t handle the losing, but I seriously doubt that was the driving consideration. Ryan’s has never been a conventional thinker. Why would he start now?

No, this decision, and the timing, was about one thing and one thing only: giving Greg Gard the best possible shot at being his replacement. It’s an age-old trick, one that was pulled off by North Carolina’s Dean Smith and UConn’s Jim Calhoun, who retired so close to the start of the season that their respective AD’s were forced to name their top assistants as successors. (In UConn’s case, Kevin Ollie was given an interim tag, but he was made the permanent head coach a few months later.) Gard’s struggle ended sadly in October, when his father passed away at the age of 72. Ryan wanted to wait until the right moment to drop the news on his team and the public. That moment came Tuesday night.

And when Bo Ryan wanted to seize a moment, he seized a moment. Alvarez, now boxed in, had no choice but to name Gard as interim replacement. We all recognize this for what it is—a three-month audition to become the next head basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin. If Alvarez names someone else, he will be disappointing a lot of people, not just in Wisconsin, but around the country—basketball people who respect Gard’s commitment and appreciate his loyalty to his boss and the program. He will also, of course, be disappointing Bo Ryan.

As he wrapped up his moving soliloquy Tuesday night, Ryan apologized to the assembled media, saying he had to leave because there were important people he still needed to talk to.

“I’ll see you down the road,” he said.

That sure didn’t sound like goodbye. As Ryan stepped off the stage, literally and figuratively, it was in the same manner in which he coached. He did it His Way, and for His Guy.

Alvarez is arrogant enough to not care about “disappointing a lot of people, not just in Wisconsin, but around the country.” I have always wondered how much friction — which has been rumored, but never reported — there has been between Alvarez and Ryan since Alvarez didn’t hire Ryan. Alvarez has stuck with coaches he has hired more so than his predecessor, Pat Richter, did — for instance, men’s hockey coach Mike Eaves (after a horrible 2014–15 season amid dropping attendance and major questions about the direction of the program) and women’s basketball coach Bobbie Kelsey (now 45–84 in her career, hired after Alvarez fired Lisa Stone despite four consecutive winning seasons).

Wisconsin’s history of high-profile coach hires consists of one name: Stu Jackson, hired by Richter in 1992. Jackson got one high-profile recruit, Rashard Griffith, and his two seasons netted a National Invitation Tournament berth and UW’s first NCAA tournament berth since 1947. Then Jackson left to return to the NBA, and his assistant, Stan Van Gundy, was fired after one season that underwhelmed despite the presence of Griffith and Michael Finley, UW’s all-time leading scorer. Richter hired Bennett largely due to alumni demand, and Ryan was a similar hire after two years at Milwaukee that followed four national championships at UW–Platteville, after Rick Majerus considered and then turned down the opportunity. (UWP hired Ryan from UW, where he was an assistant to Bill Cofield. I have sometimes wondered if UW should have skipped Steve Yoder and hired Ryan in 1982, though it seems unlikely he would have become the coach he became given the mess that was the UW Athletic Department through most of the 1980s.)

Gard is not beginning in a great situation as demonstrated by the Badgers’ losing to two in-state rivals, Milwaukee and Marquette, and an inexcusable home loss to start the season. One can question, though, whether Wisconsin is an attractive destination to top-tier coaching candidates. The next coach will not be Oregon native Shaka Smart, now at Texas. Would Tony Bennett, who played for Dick and coached for Ryan, want to leave Virginia, where basketball is the number one sport in the number one basketball conference in college basketball, to come to UW? Saul Phillips, another former Ryan assistant now at Ohio, might be considered, but is he high-profile enough for Alvarez? What about Milwaukee coach (and former player for Ryan at UW–Platteville) Rob Jeter, fresh off beating the Badgers?

The question the rest of this season may answer is how much of UW’s success during Ryan’s career was attributable to Ryan’s system and how much was attributable to Ryan himself. That’s a hard statement, but Gard himself said last night that he’s never had more than a one-year contract.

The start of this week brought the excellent news of Wisconsin’s going to the Holiday Bowl in nearly-always-sunny San Diego to play Southern California.

That was followed by this not-excellent news, reported by the Badger Herald:

The University of Wisconsin marching band will have a not so happy holidays after 90 freshmen and several band directors are being denied the trip due to spending cuts.

Earlier this week the UW Athletic Department announced they would only fund travel expenses for 225 band members out of the nearly 325 member band, John Lucas, UW spokesperson said in a statement. This means the other members will not travel to San Diego when UW plays University of Southern California in the Holiday Bowl Dec. 30.

The Athletic Department has supported the band and provided millions of dollars for them to travel to major athletic events, Lucas said. Some of these events include bowl games, NCAA tournaments and the Alabama game in Dallas earlier this fall.

“[UW] is also committed to fiscal responsibility,” Lucas said. “That philosophy dictates that bowl travel parties, including the band, will vary in size depending on the bowl game and the level of travel expenses for individual destinations.”

Though the Athletic Department determined the number of members they would fund, it was left to the band directors to determine which members would be included in that 225 group, he said.

The band directors decided freshmen and several band directors would not be able to make the trip, Wendy Margolis, UW band administrative coordinator, said.

“You can tell everybody has been very distressed about it,” Margolis said.

Dani Wetter, freshman and band member, said she knew it was serious Tuesday when UW marching band director, Mike Leckrone turned off his microphone during practice.

“As soon as he said there wasn’t enough space on the chartered flight for freshmen and not enough funding to charter another, I felt my heart sink in my chest,” she said.

Wetter said upperclassmen band members were moved to fill in the holes freshman left in the show. Many of them, Wetter said, also felt disappointed after hearing the news and comforted the freshmen.

Marching band directors have since been in communication with the Athletic Department to ensure this does not happen again in the future, Margolis said.

Though the band directors have been communicating with the Athletic Department about the trip, changes are unlikely.

Everyone appreciates the efforts and long tradition the UW band has established, Lucas said.

“We appreciate the band’s presence at athletic events and look forward to a great trip to San Diego,” Lucas said.

The UW Athletics Department did not respond to request for comment.

To say that band alumni are irate would be a huge understatement. That includes the band members who went to no bowl games because the football team was so bad for so long. (The Badgers played in no bowl games between the 1963 and 1980 seasons and between the 1984 and 1993 seasons. I went to one bowl, the 1984 Hall of Fame Bowl.)

It’s strange that the bowl organizers would think this is OK. The bowl organizers are banking on thousands of Badger fans to come to the game. The band has been a big reason why UW has gotten some bowl games despite the football team’s less-than-sterling record. (Including the aforementioned Hall of Fame Bowl.) Certainly the parents of the freshmen band members aren’t likely to go to the game now.

It also seems to be poor financial planning to not have covered the likely cost of the entire band for a bowl game. UW had to have known that, with the new Big T1e4n tie-in to the Holiday Bowl, that a trip to San Diego might have been possible. As it is since UW didn’t get to the Big T1e4n football title game (unlike last year), that should have left some travel money available. Yes, the Band went to the Alabama game in Jerry World, but the Athletic Department knew about that game well in advance. One wonderes what would have happened had, as some predicted before the season, UW gotten to the Rose Bowl.

The only mitigating factor here is that, given the fact the football team has been going to bowl games for nearly 20 consecutive years, the chances of this year’s freshmen going to a bowl game in the future are pretty good. But nothing is guaranteed, particularly given that next year’s UW schedule is considerably more difficult than this year’s.

The bigger insult here is to UW Marching Band director Mike Leckrone, who surely deserves better than having to take part of his band to a bowl game. (Southern Cal will surely have its entire band there, although its trip just requires several buses down Interstate 5.) For that matter, it’s not guaranteed Leckrone will necessarily be back, because he’s been the band director since 1969 and nothing is forever.

Mitch Henck adds:

Athletic Director Barry Alvarez, who must have signed off on this decision, apparently has forgotten the number of people who came to his games when his team was bad, before the 1994 Rose Bowl.

For instance, 1991, when the Badgers finished 5–6 and went to no bowl. This is from the last game of that season, when Badger fans knew going into this game there would be no bowl trip, yet 38,620 showed up to watch.

It’s also the height of arrogance to decline public comment, on which Alvarez also surely signed off.

In addition to paying attention to the Badgers and Troy, as well as the game I’m announcing between nationally ranked UW–Platteville and North Central Saturday at 12:45 Central time (click here to listen, both tonight and Saturday), you might want to pay attention to Saturday’s football game between Texas Tech and Arkansas.

Matt Borcas explains why:

Like any great showdown, the matchup between Bret Bielema and [Kliff] Kingsbury brings a clear good-evil dichotomy. With his utopian brand of football, uncanny resemblance to beloved actor Ryan Gosling, and popularity with the kids, Kingsbury represents the side of righteousness and light. Meanwhile, Bielema is an unapologetic troll whose face is chiseled onto the Mt. Rushmore of odious FBS coaches. His chief redeeming quality might be his candor.

Naturally, Bielema’s reputation made Toledo’s shocking Week 2 upset of Arkansas rife with schadenfreude for the neutral observer — especially on the heels of Bielema’s accurate but irrelevant complaints about Ohio State’s schedule, which smacked of sour grapes. As a result, jokes about the Head Hog have abounded IRL and on Twitter in recent days. …

It wasn’t always this way. In terms of public perception, Bielema’s head-coaching career began auspiciously enough, with the former Iowa nose guard first making waves back in 2006, during his rookie campaign helming the Badgers. The NCAA had just instituted a dumb, ill-advised rule that required (among other things) the clock to start as soon as the ball was kicked off, not when it was received, which was ridiculous for a whole slew of reasons — primarily because it artificially shortened college football games, and who in their right mind would want less college football?

This rule was unceremoniously discarded after one season, in part because Bielema had exploited it so ingeniously in a November game against Penn State. With 23 seconds left in the first half and the Badgers set to kick off, Bielema instructed his players to intentionally go offside twice, thus reducing the amount of time the Nittany Lions had to mount a drive before halftime. Joe Paterno was FURIOUS, but there was nothing the officials could do but shrug their shoulders and point to the rulebook. It’s a damn shame that video of this incident has been removed from YouTube.

Initially, Bielema was lauded for exposing Rule 3-2-5-e as a sham. He was sticking it to the establishment, and as we all know, there aren’t many establishments more loathsome than the NCAA. In retrospect, though, it’s fair to wonder if Bielema’s motives were less altruistic than plain evil; maybe he got off on bullying his easily agitated peer. To quote noted college football guru Stephanie Tanner: How rude! …

In 2012, Bielema criticized new Ohio State coach Urban Meyer’s widely practiced method of attempting to “flip” recruits, famously declaring that “We at the Big Ten don’t want to be like the SEC — in any way, shape, or form.” Bielema would infamously end up bolting for Arkansas less than a year later, where he presumably remains insecure that Meyer is a far better recruiter.

At Arkansas, Bielema fully blossomed into the grade-A troll that he is today. He’s feuded with too many SEC coaches to name, generally due to his self-serving and baseless contention that hurry-up offenses pose a serious player-safety risk. However, it was his wife, Jen, who caused his greatest controversy to date with the Razorbacks.

As you surely remember, Wisconsin got utterly jobbed by the notoriously awful Pac-12 officials in a 2013 game against Arizona State — so much so that the refs faced sanctions afterward:

https://youtu.be/JQmNYPOgx40

We interrupt your weekend to bring you this from The Big Lead:

Bo Ryan offered up what appeared to be a stunner this week: Remember how I said in June I was going to retire after this season? Yeah, not so sure about that anymore.

That’s what it sounds like on the surface. What basketball insiders behind-the-scenes are saying is much juicer. As the story goes, Bo Ryan wants his associate head coach, Greg Gard, to be his replacement. Gard has been with the program for 14 years. Ryan wants Gard to get the same deal that Mike Hopkins is getting at Syracuse – “coach-in-waiting” for Jim Boeheim.

But it sounds like Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez isn’t ready to hand the job to Gard. The rumored reason? Because of the incredible job Ryan and Gard have done the last two years – getting Wisconsin to the Final 4 – the Badgers opening is suddenly much more attractive than it was five years ago. Sure, we could give it to Gard but … what if we could snag a big name with head coaching experience and keep this machine rolling?

Could Alvarez steal Tony Bennett from Virginia? Bennett is from Wisconsin, was a former assistant there, his Dad coached there, and his star has never been brighter. His family is still in Wisconsin. Virginia’s had a splendid 2-year run that could end after this season. What about Northern Iowa coach Ben Jacobson? He’s built Northern Iowa into the second best program in the Missouri Valley Conference.

If that’s what Alvarez is thinking, Ryan has two options: 1) Stay on as head coach beyond this year (not what he wants, as he turns 68 in December) or 2) Suddenly step down before this season begins so that the Badgers have to promote Gard to “interim” head coach, and he has a chance to succeed with talented players like Nigel Hayes and Bronson Koenig.

It’s going to be a fun 12 weeks in Madison as this unfolds.

The Presteblog staff photographer, who doubles as my aunt, got these photos from Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis Monday night:

They are from Wisconsin’s first NCAA men’s basketball championship game appearance since 1941.

Wisconsin lost 68–63, two days after ending Kentucky’s undefeated season, ending the careers of seniors who went into Wisconsin unheralded and left having won Big Ten regular-season and tournament titles, back-to-back Final Four berths, UW’s first number one NCAA seed, and a championship game appearance.

The painful part is that there is no guarantee that Wisconsin will get back to the Final Four. Certainly not next year, with the irreplaceable Frank Kaminsky graduating and Sam Dekker possibly departing too. Coach Bo Ryan has coached longer than he will coach, so the last, best chance for a national championship in my lifetime more likely than not ended at the buzzer Monday night.

However, UW lost to Duke, which if you’re not a Dook-hater is certainly not a terrible program to lose to. Sports Illustrated has quite a story this week on all the things coach Mike Krzyzewski had to do to get this title. And there should be great satisfaction in defeating Kentucky, which was so flummoxed by Wisconsin’s play that coach John Calipari was yelling at his assistants “What do we do?!” toward the end.

And of course, for those of us who grew up with a .500 season being a highlight, this is still somewhat surreal. Badger fans of today really don’t know how good this is, unless you remember how bad it used to be.