The contemporary Wisconsin Badger fan really cares about basketball. I’ve been monitoring the Badgers Wire Facebook page because a part of my job as the editor of this site is to post links on said Facebook page. I can speak from personal experience when I say that reaction to the 2020 team’s 5-5 start was intense. People were upset.
I hasten to add: It’s good to be upset. It’s good to care and show passion. Being upset when a team loses shows that fans have standards and don’t want a program to slip. This is not a criticism. It’s a reality: Wisconsin fans care about college basketball. Football matters more, sure, but basketball matters a lot.
This isn’t the SEC, where baseball is often the second most important college sport behind football. Basketball matters in Wisconsin, and it should.
Yet, it can be said that basketball did not ALWAYS matter in Wisconsin — not the way it does now, not the way it does since the Badgers built a brand and an identity, transforming their reputation after going 47 years without an NCAA Tournament berth from 1947 to 1994.
It is one thing to enjoy winning when it happens. That’s the prevailing mindset or reaction when a school not accustomed to doing much of anything in a given sport suddenly achieves at the highest level. Think of Texas Tech making the national championship game last year. Basketball success is appreciated in Lubbock, but that’s not the same thing as saying the sport matters in the community. A sport matters in a community when a program establishes a high standard. Games become happenings. Winning becomes expected. Success is absorbed into the local bloodstream. Winning is no longer a pleasant surprise; it becomes a way of life.
I grew up in Phoenix in the 1980s. I saw, 120 miles to the southeast in Tucson, the University of Arizona go from being a complete and total nobody in college basketball to a huge national force under Lute Olson. Basketball didn’t MATTER in Tucson in 1985. It sure mattered six or seven years later in the early 1990s, when it was clear that Arizona was going to churn out one highly-seeded NCAA Tournament team after another.
I can therefore relate to the transformation in Wisconsin hoops. There are some obvious similarities.
The larger overall point I am making here, though, is that while basketball matters in Madison, it wasn’t always the case because the program went through a lot of lean years. It isn’t a criticism or a condemnation to plainly note that basketball has not been a matter of religious significance, of considerable cultural importance, throughout Wisconsin basketball history. Since the late 1990s, yes, it has been very important, but not the whole 82-season period since the first NCAA Tournament in 1939. Heck, not even for a majority of the past 82 seasons.
When we sit here and reflect — during the week which would have led up to the 2020 Final Four in Atlanta — on the place of Wisconsin in the larger cosmos of college basketball, it is fascinating to note that some schools which have culturally valued basketball for a LONG time are empirically not as accomplished as Wisconsin is in college hoops. This is a testament to what Wisconsin has been able to achieve the past 25 years.
Think of some schools where basketball has mattered for a long time. They aren’t nearly as good as Wisconsin.
One example: North Carolina State. When was the last time North Carolina State made a strong run at the ACC title, or gained a very high NCAA Tournament seed, or made the Final Four? The Wolfpack finished second in the ACC in 2004 and gained a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Okay, so 16 years isn’t THAT long a period of time… but that is the only time in the past 31 years that North Carolina State has won more than 10 ACC regular-season games in a 16-game conference schedule. (The league now uses an 18-game schedule.) It is also the only time in the past 31 years that North Carolina State has been seeded higher than No. 5 in the NCAA Tournament.
Get this: North Carolina State has never been seeded higher than a 3 in the NCAA Tournament. The program’s last Final Four was 1983 under Jimmy V, Jim Valvano.
Yes, North Carolina State has two national titles while Wisconsin has only one, but Wisconsin has been consistently better than State over the past 25 years. More precisely, UW has replicated strong annual results and established a higher regular standard than North Carolina State — this, despite the fact that North Carolina State exists in a college basketball cradle where measuring up to North Carolina and Duke is a fervent aspiration of Wolfpack fans.
College basketball contains enormous cultural weight in the Carolinas. Yet, Wisconsin has established a decades-long standard which exceeds what North Carolina State has ever been able to build in its history.
Another really good example of Wisconsin being a better basketball school than another school which places enormous cultural emphasis on hoops: Purdue.
The Boilermakers claim John Wooden as an alumnus and former basketball player for the school. They made the Final Four in 1969. They returned in 1980. They have been an above-average program for much of the past 40 years under Gene Keady and his protege-turned-successor, Matt Painter.
Yes, Purdue has more overall NCAA Tournament appearances than Wisconsin does, but the Badgers have more Elite Eights, more Final Fours, and more national titles. The Sweet 16 appearances are slightly in favor of Purdue (12-10), but only slightly.
Wisconsin is a better program. Wisconsin also beat Purdue head-to-head in the Elite Eight 20 years ago. Wisconsin rates as a better basketball school, even though college hoops is an enormous and longstanding point of pride in the state of Indiana.
Saint John’s is another school worth including here. The Red Storm, formerly the Redmen, made the 1952 national championship game and lost to a Kansas team which had a man named Dean Smith on its roster. The Johnnies, located in New York, play home games in Madison Square Garden, a mecca of hoops. They exist in a city which cherishes its identity as a hub for the city game. Yet, St. John’s has only two Final Fours to its credit.
Much like Purdue, St. John’s has been good enough, long enough, in men’s basketball to have more NCAA tourney berths than Wisconsin, but the Badgers have more Sweet 16s, the same number of Elite Eights, and more Final Fours. Given that SJU has been adrift for most of the past 20 years, would anyone seriously question that Wisconsin is the objectively better basketball school?
Wisconsin isn’t just a better basketball school than a lot of schools which don’t care about college hoops; Wisconsin is a better basketball school than a lot of schools which DO care about this sport.