Wisconsin has won 38 NCAA Tournament games. We won’t rank all 38 — why diminish the value of any NCAA win? If a game is “No. 38,” that undercuts its importance. Every NCAA Tournament win is important.
We can, however, identify the top 10 NCAA Tournament wins. That’s not only easier, but it allows games 11-38 to rest more peacefully, instead of suggesting they need to compete with each other.
We’ll start at No. 10 and work our way up to the top during the Final Four week which will end without a Final Four in Atlanta:
10 – 1994 ROUND OF 64: UW OVER CINCINNATI
The first Wisconsin NCAA Tournament game since 1947 was the first NCAA Tournament game generations of Badger fans had ever known. Winning the game was a small but significant demonstration that Wisconsin could compete on a national stage. The rise of UW basketball in the quarter of a century since this game makes this game greater in importance. The Badgers built on this moment; there was no guarantee that they would do so.
9 – 2012 ROUND OF 32: UW OVER VANDERBILT
The Badgers faced a tough and very talented Vanderbilt team which, six days earlier, had beaten eventual 2012 national champion Kentucky in the SEC Tournament final. Wisconsin needed to win this game to make back-to-back Sweet 16s for the first time in school history. It won a squeaker by playing elite defense. Wisconsin crossed an important threshold in this game in Albuquerque.
8 – 2000 ROUND OF 32: UW OVER ARIZONA
The 2000 Final Four run was completed against Purdue in the Elite Eight, but it first had to go through the No. 1 seed in the West Region, Lute Olson’s Arizona Wildcats. Arizona had not scored fewer than 60 points in any game that season… until it met Wisconsin. Badgers 66, Wildcats 59. Wisconsin’s biggest wins in NCAA Tournament history involve three wins over Arizona. This was the first. Two bigger ones awaited more than a decade later.
7 – 2015 SWEET 16: UW OVER NORTH CAROLINA
The 2015 Badger team which created back-to-back Final Fours did not steamroll any of its opponents. Wisconsin won in the first round by a modest 14 points and then won its next four games by seven points apiece. This game against North Carolina was the “get over the hump game” for the 2015 team. North Carolina led by seven midway through the second half and had the blue-blood swagger you would expect from a proud program. Wisconsin answered the bell down the stretch and was ready for Arizona in the next round.
6 – 2014 ROUND OF 32: UW OVER OREGON
The Oregon Ducks have been an annoying, tough opponent for Wisconsin in recent NCAA Tournaments. The Ducks battled UW hard in 2015, not just 2014, and they wiped out the 2019 Badgers in the round of 64. This game was in Milwaukee, but that was no guarantee of success for Wisconsin. Whether this game was played in Milwaukee, or Portland, or Eugene, or on an aircraft carrier, or in a hotel ballroom, or on Mount Everest, it didn’t matter: UW had to make the plays needed to beat a scrappy, resourceful opponent.
It did.
The Badgers used this game as a catapult to the West Regional in Anaheim, where they dominated Baylor and nipped Arizona to send Bo Ryan to his first Final Four.
5 – 2000 ELITE EIGHT: UW OVER PURDUE
The top five has the true mountaintop moments, when Wisconsin clinched Final Fours, won a national title, or won a Final Four semifinal. The Dick Bennett Final Four was extra sweet in that it came against an old and familiar Big Ten foe, Gene Keady and Purdue. Keady might be the best coach never to have made the Final Four. John Chaney of Temple might have an argument to make. This game lingers in the public memory because Dick Bennett’s son, Tony, beat Gene Keady protege Matt Painter to deny Purdue another Final Four last year, when Virginia beat the Boilermakers in overtime.
4 – 2015 ELITE EIGHT: UW OVER ARIZONA
The first Elite Eight win over Arizona snapped a 14-year Final Four drought, so that one was bigger, but going back to back against Arizona was certainly sweet. The Badgers made consecutive Final Fours for the first time.
3 – 2014 ELITE EIGHT: UW OVER ARIZONA
The pressure on the 2014 Badgers to get Bo Ryan to the Final Four was enormous. UW’s defense shut down Arizona on three separate possessions in the final minute, giving Wisconsin a cathartic moment which was more than a decade in the making.
2 – 1941 NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP: UW OVER WASHINGTON STATE
The NCAA Tournament might have had only eight teams in 1941, and the “Big Dance” wasn’t a very big dance at all back then. The NCAA tourney didn’t have any cultural reach into the larger American consciousness. Yet, this is still a national title in men’s basketball; it remains the only one the Badgers have achieved. Their 39-34 win over Washington State owns an immortal place in school history, even though the memory is distant and Jim Nantz or Brent Musburger weren’t there to call the action.
1 – 2015 FINAL FOUR NATIONAL SEMIFINAL: UW OVER KENTUCKY
An accomplishment needs to be pretty darn special to outrank a national championship.
This is pretty darn special, wouldn’t you say?
Wisconsin took down 38-0 Kentucky to deny the Wildcats their own bid for college basketball immortality. Wisconsin was a No. 1 seed for the first time in school history, yet felt like a massive underdog heading into this national semifinal, a weird combination of circumstances. Wisconsin remembered that it was a damn great team and played like it against the school which had knocked the Badgers out of the 2014 Final Four.
Revenge accompanied a historic victory. Yes, this is worth elevating over the 1941 national title.