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.
