The 2005 Wisconsin Badgers became Bo Ryan’s first Elite Eight team in Madison. It wasn’t an elite team, but it forged an elite achievement. Even the best college basketball programs encounter a season in which a less-than-great team gets a bracket break and cashes it in.
The 1988 Kansas Jayhawks, a No. 6 seed, never had to play the top two seeds in the Midwest Region in that NCAA Tournament. They made the Final Four in Kansas City, close to home, and used home-court advantage (plus Danny Manning) to win the national title.
The 1996 Syracuse Orangemen (they were the Orangemen then before becoming the Orange later on) were a No. 4 seed, hardly one of Jim Boeheim’s best teams in a larger context. They didn’t have to play the No. 1 seed in the West Region. They played eighth-seeded Georgia in the Sweet 16. They played fifth-seeded Mississippi State instead of top-seeded Connecticut in the Final Four national semifinals. They made a run to the national championship game before losing to Kentucky.
The bracket break is something a team has to be able to pounce on when it happens. Such was the story of the 2005 UW team.
The Badgers handled Northern Iowa in a close game. Viewed in isolation, that achievement was not spectacular — Wisconsin, seeded sixth, was supposed to beat No. 11 UNI. Yet, the magic of the NCAA Tournament is that if you do what you are supposed to do in one round, the bracket could open up if other teams DON’T do what they were supposed to do.
Kansas and then Connecticut did not do what they were supposed to do.
Kansas, a 3 seed, lost to 14th-seeded Bucknell in round one. Connecticut, a 2 seed, lost to 10th-seeded North Carolina State in round two. What looked like a death march for Wisconsin — through Bill Self’s Jayhawks and Jim Calhoun’s Huskies — turned into a path filled with double-digit seeds. Wisconsin took care of Bucknell, 71-62, in round two, and earned a date with North Carolina State in the Sweet 16.
Wisconsin’s equipment managers had to pack road uniforms for the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament in Oklahoma City, but those road uniforms were never used in OKC. Wisconsin wore home whites against Bucknell, and it wore white again in the Sweet 16 in Syracuse versus N.C. State.
The Badgers handled their business, and Bo Ryan moved the program forward. No one knows what would have happened in the 2020 NCAA Tournament, but Wisconsin, as a 4 seed, might have watched a No. 1 seed lose in the second round.
Just take care of your business: Wisconsin did that in the 2005 NCAA Tournament.