Tag: Alando Tucker

Wisconsin basketball’s all-time leading scorers

Can you name the entire list?

Wisconsin basketball has a storied history of prolific scorers.

Whether it’s big men including Ethan Happ and Jon Leuer, point guards including Devin Harris, forwards including Sam Dekker or shooting guards like Brad Davison, Wisconsin’s all-time points list is rich with history and success.

Related: Which Big Ten football team has the toughest conference schedule in 2024?

That history obviously recently included trips to the Final Four in 2014 and 2015, but it also includes numerous Big Ten titles and regular-season winning.

Recently, we took a look at Wisconsin football’s all-time leaders in passing yards, rushing yards, receiving yards and sacks.

Now, since there are some recent updates to add, it’s time to take a look at Wisconsin’s basketball’s all-time scoring leaders:

Wisconsin basketball fans share the best dunks in Kohl Center history

What is your favorite Kohl Center moment?

Wisconsin guard A.J. Storr lit social media on fire with his poster dunk against Maryland on Tuesday.

The Badgers won the game 74-70, improving to 18-9 on the season and 10-6 in Big Ten play. While the 1-5 skid to start February mostly dropped the team out of Big Ten contention, there is still a sliver of hope entering the final stretch.

It’s a good thing Wisconsin held on to beat Maryland, because otherwise Storr’s acrobatic dunk might’ve been forgotten. The win makes it easier to celebrate the play — one which made it as the No. 2 play on SportsCenter’s Top 10:

In honor of this dunk, Wisconsin basketball’s official ‘X’ account asked fans to share the best dunks in Kohl Center history. Here are some of those responses:

Former Wisconsin MBB coach honored Wednesday

After what felt like far too long, former Badgers men’s basketball coach Bo Ryan is set to be honored Wednesday in Madison.

After what felt like far too long, former Badgers men’s basketball coach Bo Ryan is set to be honored Wednesday in Madison. Ryan along with multi-sport athlete Gary Buss will be inducted into the Madison Sports Hall of Fame Club.

Ryan was the head coach at Wisconsin for 14 full seasons (12 games in 2015) and produced 364-130 overall record, which is good for an all-time program best 73.7 percent win percentage. Additionally, Wisconsin made the NCAA Tournament in all 14 of the campaigns he was the head coach.

Most notably, the Badgers made two consecutive trips to the Final Four in 2014 and 2015, losing in the National Championship to Duke 68-63 in the latter run.

Ryan helped coach some of the best players in program history, namely Alando Tucker, Devin Harris, Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker amongst others. There’s no denying that he left a substantial impact on the program, the university, the city of Madison and the state of Wisconsin as a whole.

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Wisconsin Badgers basketball all-time starting five

Wisconsin men’s basketball’s all-time starting five:

The University of Wisconsin men’s basketball program has been among college basketball’s most consistently successful programs during the past two decades and counting.

The people in Wisconsin have Midwestern values. They’re blue collar, hard hat, lunch pail people that appreciate an honest day’s work. They want to see a reflection of themselves on the court, and the Badgers men’s basketball program has given them exactly that.

While Wisconsin isn’t on the same tier as college basketball’s blue-blood programs, it has put together a rather impressive resume of its own:

  • National Championships: 1 (1941)
  • Final Four Appearances: 4 (1941, 2000, 2014, 2015)
  • Elite Eight Appearances: 6 (1941, 1947, 2000, 2005, 2014, 2015)
  • Sweet Sixteen Appearances: 10 (2000, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017)

Achieving this kind of success required high level coaching, but it also took a handful of extraordinary players capable of elevating the program to new heights.

That begs the question, who would make up Wisconsin basketball’s all-time starting five? Today at the BadgersWire we’re going to unpack who those players should be, and their credentials:

Top 5 individual scoring performances of the Bo Ryan & Greg Gard eras

Here, in order, are Wisconsin’s top five individual scoring performances of the Bo Ryan and Greg Gard era’s.

Monday night against Purdue, Wisconsin Badgers star guard Johnny Davis posted one of the most memorable scoring barrages in recent memory.

The sophomore guard finished with 37 points, 14 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks in a 74-69 victory at Mackey Arena.

It was a top-five individual scoring performance against a team ranked in the top five, and put Davis’ name firmly in the discussion for National Player of the Year.

The La Crosse, Wisconsin, native’s historic offensive performance took me on a stroll down memory lane on other big-time individual scoring performances in program history.

So, here, in order, are the school’s top five individual scoring performances of the Bo Ryan and Greg Gard eras.

Hoops Mount Rushmore: Who Are the Greatest Badgers in the Last 20 Years?

Sports are on pause and, although it’s only April 3, it feels like the dog days of summer are in full swing. So, what better to do while we go back and re-watch every notable Badger sport game from the last 20 years? How about a Mount Rushmore. …

Sports are on pause and, although it’s only April 3, it feels like the dog days of summer are in full swing. 

So, what better to do while we go back and re-watch every notable Badger sport game from the last 20 years? How about a Mount Rushmore.

Here, in no particular order, are the four greatest Badger basketball players since 2000.

 

Frank Kaminsky (2011-2015)

This one was an easy one. Although Kaminsky began his career playing sparingly, only starting two games in his first two seasons, his junior and senior seasons vaulted him into Badger basketball lure as he helped lead the team to two consecutive Final Four appearances including a National Championship defeat in 2015 at the hands of the Duke Blue Devils. What Kaminsky brought to the floor was a unique blend of size, inside skill and outside shooting, a combination which led him to be drafted ninth overall by the Charlotte Hornets in 2015. Kaminsky finished his career with the greatest single-season scoring performance in school history with 732 points as a senior in 2014-2015, No. 12 on the Badgers all-time scoring list, 1458 total points, the only Naismith Trophy, Wooden Award, Oscar Robertson Trophy AND AP Player of the Year award winner in a single season and, again, helped lead the Badgers on their best two-year run in school history. Was he a much better player than guys like Jon Leuer and Sam Dekker? No. But his final two seasons vaulted him to one of the greatest Badgers since 2000 and into Badger lure.

 

Ethan Happ (2015-2019)

Ethan Happ finished his career in 2019 as Wisconsin’s all-time leader in rebounds, blocks and triple doubles and No. 3 on the school’s all-time scoring list. Happ was the model of consistency throughout his four years, averaging 12.4 points and 7.9 rebounds as a freshman, 14 and 9 as a sophomore, 17.9 and 8 as a junior and 17.3 and 10.1 as a senior, and finished his career with a final tally of 2130 points, 1217 rebounds and 154 blocks. While he was unable to lead the Badgers back to the Final Four after their consecutive appearances in 2013-14 and 2014-15, he was a pivotal cog in the team’s two Sweet Sixteen runs his freshman and sophomore year and he would’ve had the team in the Elite Eight in 2016-17 were it not for a miraculous three pointer by Florida’s Chris Chiozza at the overtime buzzer.

 

Nigel Hayes (2013-2017)

Like Kaminsky, Nigel Hayes gets a boost due to the team’s run of success during his time in Madison. Unlike Kaminsky, though, Hayes finished his Badger career near the top of seemingly every leaderboard. He is the only player in school history to finish inside the top-10 in all-time points, assists and rebounds, finished with the fourth-most points in school history (third but has since been passed by Happ), played in the most games in school history (150), was the second player in Big Ten History to top 1800 points, 700 rebounds and 300 assists and, again, was one of the main catalysts for the best four-year run of success in school history. He may have been overshadowed a bit by Sam Dekker and Kaminsky on the two Final Four teams, but his consistent production for four years, versatility and team success make it necessary to put him on this list.

 

Alando Tucker (2002-2007)

Finally, and no I did not forget about him, the school’s all-time leading scorer Alando Tucker. Tucker finished his Badger career with 2217 points, 769 rebounds and an impressive 134 games played. He was also the school’s first consensus 1st-team All-American since 1942, the Big Ten Player of the Year as a senior, helped lead Wisconsin to the Elite Eight in 2004-2005 and really ushered in the Bo Ryan era of Badger basketball, arguably the best run of success the school has had in its history. He came years before current students like myself even followed college sports but his greatness and impact on the program is undeniable.

Stats and accolades via UWBadgers.com.

For Badgers forward Aleem Ford, hard work has turned into opportunity

A feature on Aleem Ford, with quotes from Badgers legend Alando Tucker included

It seems like more than three and a half years ago that juniors Aleem Ford and D’Mitrik Trice came to the University of Wisconsin, extending their career together from IMG Academy.

I had the pleasure of witnessing the two inseparable friends from the start, as I happened to sit behind them in a large theater class.

They were just freshmen in Madison, and although they sat in front of the lecture hall and enjoyed to make people around them laugh, one thing stood out: they were incredibly close, and no moment would get too big for them as long as they had each other.

Some of those moments came early on for Trice, who played in 37 games his true freshman season, for a team that was seconds away from an Elite Eight appearance.

But for Ford, that moment took a little longer to get there, waiting behind long-time Wisconsin starters like Nigel Hayes and Khalil Iverson.

After a redshirt season, playing as a partial starter as a freshman and then not starting any games last season, Ford is unquestionably a starter for the 2019-2020 Badgers, and needs to play a pretty big role on both ends for this team to be successful.

So far, he has done just that, averaging 11.5 points and five rebounds per game.

Ford has consistently shown flashes of his game since he arrived on campus, but now looks to turn those flashes into full games, on both ends of the floor.

Coming into the year, Ford worked on his post game, and got some help from UW’s all-time leading scorer, assistant coach Alando Tucker.

“I saw he had a lot of potential. He has so much potential, and it’s just dedicating yourself to get better on and off the court every day,” Tucker said about Ford.

“That can be quite a task, and I think he has welcomed it though, as I have truly seen it everyday, from the court to the classroom.”

From watching Ford at practice nearly four years ago, it was clear that there would be some impressive moments, but also some growing pains, especially with his height but a smaller frame early on.

Aleem knew that with the departures of Iverson and All-American Ethan Happ, there would be some open spots for playing time, and more importantly, the need for production, especially on the inside.

“After last season, I knew that was something that I wanted to work on, and something that I took seriously over the summer to get stronger,” Ford said.

“I tried to take care of my body that way, and do everything I could skill and development wise to put myself in that position.”

From a coaching standpoint, as well as that of a former player that could score on the wing and down low, Tucker had an interesting perspective on Ford from his transition into today.

“He’s more committed. The commitment and the dedication…I think the first few years you kind of try to get settled and figure things out, and I think this year he has come in much more committed, and has shown that every day,” Tucker said.

At 3-1 heading into Thursday’s matchup with in-state rival UW-Green Bay, the Badgers have shown improvement through each game this season, specifically down low and on the defensive end.

On the other side of the ball, Ford is third on the team in scoring, and also third in rebounding.

Ford and Trice are finally starting together, and Aleem feels like it has all been a pretty smooth transition to get to this point.

“Coming in as freshmen together, you’ve known us since we’ve been here and have seen it all,” Ford said.

“Just seeing how we have grown together has been awesome, on and off the court, with leadership and chemistry, has been really nice.”

Not surprisingly, Trice feels the same way, and that has done a lot for this squad early on.

“For me and Aleem, we’ve been roommates and teammates for four or five years now, and I think that chemistry really helps build and build over time,” Trice said.

“We’ve both put work in, and I think that and the chemistry has been a big part of our success over the last few years.”

Ford’s growth and maturity have shown in multiple ways early in the 2019-2020 campaign, whether it be on the court, in the weight room, or the in the classroom.

With his long time teammate next to him, Ford and the Badgers will look to continue their success, heading into conference season just around the corner.