Bo Ryan returns to the Kohl Center for Wisconsin vs. Green Bay

The legendary Badger coach will be honored at halftime

Friday night at the Kohl Center will be a family affair for the Ryan’s. Wisconsin takes on Green Bay and legendary longtime Badger head coach Bo Ryan will be in attendance as the school will recognize his long list of accomplishments with a halftime ceremony.

On the opposite bench will be Bo’s son Will Ryan, who is beginning his second season at the helm of Green Bay. The former Badger coach will likely be hoping that both teams can somehow come away with a win.

Wisconsin will welcome back fans for their second home game of the year, and will have a special halftime salute to honor the Ryan family legacy.

On the floor, Wisconsin will look to improve to 2-0 on the young season against a Green Bay team that dropped their season-opener to Indiana State.

How to watch Wisconsin basketball vs. UW-Green Bay

The No. 4-ranked Wisconsin Badgers will be playing late tomorrow afternoon at the Kohl Center against the UW-Green Bay Phoenix. The Badge…

The No. 4-ranked Wisconsin Badgers will be playing late tomorrow afternoon at the Kohl Center against the UW-Green Bay Phoenix. The Badgers went undefeated in their opening week of play, beating the Eastern Illinois Panthers and Arkansas-Pine Bluff Golden Lions by extremely large margins.

Related: A look ahead at the week for Wisconsin basketball

The Badgers are one of the hottest teams in college basketball right now, along with several other Big Ten schools including No. 3-ranked Iowa and No. 5-ranked Illinois. Forward Micah Potter also seems to have taken the next step forward this season, with a phenomenal 19 points, five rebounds, three assists, and three steals against Arkansas-Pine Bluff.

Nov 27, 2020; Madison, Wisconsin, USA; Wisconsin Badgers forward Micah Potter (11) drives against Arkansas-Pine Bluff Golden Lions forward Markedric Bell (right) at the Kohl Center. Mandatory Credit: Mary Langenfeld-USA TODAY Sports

Green Bay lost its first game of the season against the Minnesota Golden Gophers 99-69, but the Phoenix will be a much tougher opponent than the Panthers or Golden Lions were last week. UW-Green Bay is led by head coach Will Ryan this season, son of legendary Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan.

Here is how to watch tomorrow’s game against the UW-Green Bay Phoenix:

How to watch:

Matchup: No. 4 Wisconsin Badgers vs. UW-Green Bay Phoenix

Where: Kohl Center in Madison, Wis.

When: Dec. 1, 2020 at 4 p.m. CST

Where to watch: Big Ten Network

Announcers: 

  • Play-by-Play: Jeff Levering
  • Analyst: Brian Butch

Where to stream: The FOX Sports Go app or online at foxsportsgo.com

Where to listen: Badger Sports Network on the iHeartRadio app or Sirius Satellite Radio 196

Announcers: 

  • Play-by-Play: Matt Lepay
  • Analyst: Mike Lucas

Badgers vs. Green Bay is a perfect Wisconsin-Purdue appetizer

Reflections on Wisconsin basketball, Green Bay hoops, and the Bennett family in a week which includes a Wisconsin-Purdue football game.

Saturday, Wisconsin plays the Purdue Boilermakers in football. It is somehow so perfect that on Thursday, two days before that pigskin production, the Badgers play the Green Bay Phoenix in basketball.

“Really?”, you might be asking. “How do you connect the dots on that one?” Fair question. The basic point which will be explained in this article is as follows: If there is a single non-Wisconsin Big Ten school which rises to the forefront of the Wisconsin-Green Bay basketball game, it is Purdue. The reality behind that statement is much simpler than you might think. It just requires a little time to map out the connection.

One of the most significant moments in the history of college basketball in the state of Wisconsin was the Green Bay Phoenix’s win over California and a man named Jason Kidd in the 1994 NCAA Tournament. The year 2019 marks the 25th anniversary of that triumph for Dick Bennett. The potency of that 1994 win for Green Bay lies partly in the fact that it helped Bennett take the next step up the ladder to Madison and the Badgers in the fall of 1995. What Bennett developed at UW is still going today under the guidance of Greg Gard. There is a line of events and a series of roots which grew into tall trees and long, sturdy branches which have Wisconsin in great shape today. The success of Green Bay basketball 25 years ago was one of those central roots.

When Dick Bennett coached Green Bay to that huge win over Cal and Jason Kidd, he had a star player on his UWGB team. You might have heard of him: Tony Bennett.

The relationship which was coach-and-player became coach-and-assistant at Wisconsin and then at Washington State. Dick Bennett wanted to give Tony Bennett a program, so he stepped away at Washington State so that his son could become a collegiate head coach. In a very short time, Tony Bennett had already given a strong indication that as great as his dad was, he had the ability to become an even greater college basketball coach.

Taking Washington State to the Sweet 16? Making Washington State a top-four NCAA Tournament seed in consecutive seasons? No one does that. No one HAD done that… until Tony Bennett did it. Some really good basketball coaches had worked at Washington State in the past: George Raveling, Kelvin Sampson, Marv Harshman. None of them did what Tony Bennett managed to do.

Given what he pulled off in Pullman, Washington, Tony Bennett came to Virginia as a man capable of transforming the Cavaliers. The surprise isn’t that he succeeded; it is that he made Virginia successful at the very highest reaches of college basketball. Over the past six years, Virginia has won more ACC regular-season championships and gained more No. 1 seeds at the ACC Tournament than Duke or North Carolina. Virginia has become a heavyweight team with elite annual results.

There was, however, one missing piece in Tony Bennett’s resume, and entering the 2019 Elite Eight, a familiar story came full circle… with Purdue being part of the drama. This is why Purdue is the non-Wisconsin Big Ten school which offers the perfect accompaniment this week (albeit in football) to a Wisconsin-versus-Green Bay basketball game.

If Green Bay’s success helped give Badger basketball Dick Bennett, and if Badger basketball helped Tony Bennett begin his storied coaching career, one must then realize that Green Bay’s 1994 triumph is part of a chain of events which led to the 2000 NCAA Tournament and Dick Bennett’s ultimate coaching breakthrough.

Nearly 20 years before his son finally reached a Final Four at Virginia, Dick Bennett arrived at college basketball’s mecca. How did he do it, or more precisely, which school was the last obstacle standing in the way of that cathartic moment? Purdue. Wisconsin defeated the Boilermakers in the 2000 West Regional Final in Albuquerque. Bennett defeated Gene Keady, who is — and always will be — a valid answer to the question, “Who is the best college basketball coach to never make the Final Four?”

How wildly improbable it was, 19 years later, that Purdue, of all teams, would stand in Tony Bennett’s path as Virginia tried to make the Final Four for the first time in 35 years and give Tony the achievement his career had somehow not yet attained. Three years earlier, in 2016, Virginia played 10th-seeded Syracuse in the Elite Eight and gained a big early lead. That was a veteran Virginia team, the last team one would have expected to panic and get rattled by full-court defensive pressure. Yet, Syracuse’s press unnerved the Cavaliers, who imploded in the second half. Before the Virginia loss to UMBC — a 1 seed falling to a 16 seed — Tony Bennett had already tasted a supremely bitter defeat. UMBC wasn’t the first gut punch Tony had absorbed; he experienced that sensation two years earlier.

If Tony couldn’t beat Purdue, he would have to go through yet another year of “can’t win the big one” refrains. A career would have taken on the baggage which accumulates when an elite coach somehow doesn’t attain the one feat he is expected to capture at some point. Somehow, Virginia raced upcourt when trailing in the final seconds of regulation. Somehow, the Cavaliers tied the game on one of the most memorable plays in college basketball history. Somehow, the Hoos got to overtime. Somehow, they won and cross the threshold.

The end result: A Dick Bennett protege — his son — had beaten a Gene Keady protege, Matt Painter, in a regional final 19 years after the mentors had locked horns in Albuquerque. Wisconsin beat Purdue in the year 2000. A member of the Bennett family beat Purdue once again in 2019. This is how Purdue is the perfect Wisconsin football opponent at the end of the same week marked by a Badger-Green Bay basketball battle.

Wisconsin versus Green Bay is always a special game, but now that a member of the Bennett family has a national championship — lifting Dick and Tony to the height of their legacy in their moment of ultimate triumph — the presence of Green Bay on the other side of the court lends even more stature to this particular edition of Badgers versus Phoenix.

The rise of the Bennett family to the very top of the college basketball coaching profession is the perfect backdrop for a game between two schools whose existences and legacies are soaked in the contributions and influence of Dick and Tony Bennett. You could not have scripted this 2019 basketball reunion any better… and you could not have had a Wisconsin football game at the end of this week against a more appropriate opponent.

Badgers-Phoenix is a point of pride for the state of Wisconsin

Reflections on college basketball in the state of Wisconsin before the Badgers play the Green Bay Phoenix.

This isn’t a new revelation. This is a celebration of a well-known fact. The Thursday game between the Wisconsin Badgers and the Green Bay Phoenix in the Kohl Center offers a reminder of how good basketball has been in the state of Wisconsin for a very long time. One week before Thanksgiving, it is a time for Wisconsinites — not just Badger fans — to continue to give thanks for the basketball bounty they have received for over half a century.

It all started in 1965 at West Bend High School. A young man named Dick Bennett taught the freshman team. Ever since that year, one of at least three men — Bennett, Bo Ryan, and Greg Gard — has coached basketball in the state of Wisconsin. Gard carries the torch today as the bench boss of the Badgers, but Ryan is in many ways the central nerve center for the story of basketball in the Badger State over the past 54 years.

Ryan took over the Wisconsin program Bennett entrusted to him in 2001. Ryan, albeit after a messy exit, then passed the baton to Gard in December of 2015. Since 1995, these three men have guided Wisconsin basketball. None of them have failed in the attempt to establish a standard Badger fans can be proud of. Gard’s head coaching tenure through four years has made the grade. That doesn’t mean his career has already been marked as an irrevocable success, but it does mean he is on the right track.

The reason Wisconsin’s game against Green Bay emphasizes the need for state residents to give thanks is that while Dick Bennett didn’t spend an extraordinarily long time in Madison, his tenure in Green Bay put him in position to ascend to Wisconsin’s capital city and begin a golden age of Badger basketball which resulted in the 2000 Final Four berth. Bennett’s run at UW, flowing from his Green Bay triumphs, gave Ryan a foundation he turned into one and a half hugely productive decades. Under Gard, the Badgers — who looked so quintessentially “Wisconsin-like” against Marquette on Sunday — are still reaping the benefits of what Bennett gave them after coming to UW from Green Bay.

Basketball fans in the state of Wisconsin know the stories. They know the litany of names and places where Bennett, Ryan and Gard have coached. Nevertheless, let’s name them anyway, just to emphasize the depth and breadth of this proud legacy in the Badger state on the hardwood, dating back to 1965:

West Bend. Mineral Point. Marion. New London. Eau Claire. Stevens Point. Southwestern High School. Green Bay. Platteville. Milwaukee. The University of Wisconsin. Dick Bennett, Bo Ryan, and Greg Gard have combined — over the past 54 years — to coach 104 seasons of scholastic basketball (high school and college together). They not only grew the game, they defined it. They not only defined it, they sustained it. They not only sustained it, but passed it along to successors who could keep the flame from dying out.

The Wisconsin Badgers will welcome the Green Bay Phoenix to the Kohl Center on Thursday. Emphasize the word “welcome,” since this game is regularly cause for celebration of a well-known reality. The fact that scholastic basketball has been so robust and healthy in the state of Wisconsin for the past several decades shouldn’t make anyone take this sustained success for granted. It is always worth absorbing, savoring, treasuring, how good this state has it in the realm of roundball. Thanksgiving comes one Thursday early this week — why not have two Thanksgiving days in November of 2019?