Wisconsin needed some time under former coach Bo Ryan to figure out the NCAA Tournament. It took Ryan over a decade to finally crack the Final Four. However, the first decade of Ryan’s tenure in Madison was marked by amazing high-level consistency within the Big Ten Conference.
Everyone who follows Badger basketball knows that Wisconsin was relentlessly reliable in terms of getting byes in the Big Ten Tournament under Ryan. The Badgers gained a top-four seed in 15 straight Big Ten Tournaments from 2001 through 2015, a ridiculous run which will be hard for any Big Ten basketball program to match anytime soon.
The Badgers established a remarkable track record in Big Ten competition under Bo Ryan, but one of the more subtle accomplishments of the Ryan era — which doesn’t get nearly as much publicity as the 15 straight top-four finishes — is the fact that from 2004 through 2008, Wisconsin made the final of the Big Ten Tournament four times in a five-season span. Wisconsin parlayed all those early-round byes into full weekends in Indianapolis or Chicago. If you wanted to watch college basketball on Selection Sunday in the first decade of the 21st century, the odds were very good that you would watch Wisconsin in the Big Ten final on CBS, in the last game before the Selection Show.
One of the key reasons Wisconsin was able to do so well at the Big Ten Tournament is that it was able to figure out Michigan State, the gold standard in the conference under Tom Izzo. Bo Ryan won 11 of his first 14 games against Izzo at Wisconsin. Multiple wins came at the Big Ten Tournament, often in the semifinal round.
We looked at UW’s win over Michigan State in the 2004 Big Ten Tournament semifinals in a separate piece. Here, we present the 2008 Big Ten semis:
The Badgers trailed Michigan State by 12 with just over eight minutes left and by 10 with just over six minutes left.
They kept coming. “Persistence” has been Wisconsin’s middle name in this golden age of Badger basketball. That determination was on display 12 years ago in this memorable comeback.
Michigan State’s Drew Neitzel led all scorers with 26 points, but in the final minute — with the game tied at 63 — his pass was picked off by an alert Michael Flowers. Wisconsin’s alert defender stepped into the passing lane, grabbed the ball, and took it the other way for a layup with 27 seconds left. Michigan State failed to score on its next possession, but Wisconsin missed free throws with seven seconds left. Neitzel pushed the ball down the floor and attempted a game-winning 3-pointer just before the buzzer. It missed.
Tom Izzo was annoyed:
“I’m very disappointed in the outcome,” Izzo said after the game. “I don’t plan on getting over this today. I don’t plan on getting over this tomorrow. On Monday I’ll get over it.”
Bo Ryan was thrilled:
“I don’t think words can really describe what the guys did in the comeback,” Ryan said. “Probably the best way to describe it is to put a DVD on, watch it again and make your own observations.”
One observation: Wisconsin basketball thrived at the Big Ten Tournament — and against Michigan State — in the first decade of Bo Ryan’s tenure.