If you are at least 45 years old and you care about Wisconsin basketball, this piece will resonate with you. If you’re under 45, this piece will open up a new avenue of understanding into the glories of Badger hoops over the past 26 years dating back to 1994, when a long-dormant program returned to the NCAA Tournament and began to build a golden age in Madison.
Wisconsin has completely transformed its reputation in and around college basketball in the past 26 years. Basketball was not a front-page, headline-generating activity in Madison, an obscure way to pass the time during winters which came and went without consequence or impact. Now, Badger hoops is almost as reliable as the sun rising in the east or the Dallas Cowboys failing to live up to their potential. You can count on it virtually every year.
Only once in this entire century has UW failed to make the NCAA Tournament. (The Badgers, like any other NCAA Tournament lock in this 2020 season, should be credited with a berth in this year’s event. That might not need to be said, but let’s make a note of it for the sake of clarity.) The Badgers have, in this century alone, reached three Final Fours. In the past 10 years, they have made six Sweet 16s, which leads the Big Ten in a tie with Michigan State. Yes, the Badgers stand on the same plane as Tom Izzo over the past decade.
In roughly a quarter of a century, Wisconsin has gone from the outhouse to the penthouse, from weakling to strongman, from March bystander to simply outstanding. A place which wasn’t a basketball school is now very much a basketball school — this doesn’t mean basketball is more prominent or successful than football, only that Wisconsin is now a school where basketball is a big deal. One can apply the term “basketball school” in such a manner, without reference (or implication) to football on campus.
One reality which might surprise you is that a number of other schools have joined Wisconsin in this larger sense: They have, over the past 25 to 35 years, remade their reputations and become significant and/or highly credentialed basketball programs.
Villanova was the team which always lost early in the NCAA Tournament… until it won two national titles in three seasons and announced its arrival as a blue-blood.
Oklahoma hadn’t been to the Final Four since 1947… and it then made the Final Four in 1988. The Sooners have made three Final Fours the past 32 years, with five Elite Eights and several more Sweet 16s. Wisconsin fans value basketball on a cultural level more than Oklahoma fans do, but the Sooners have changed their program’s identity in the past 25 to 35 years of college basketball.
Florida under Billy Donovan and Wisconsin under Bo Ryan are very similar, as we noted in February. It is fitting that the two schools were both part of the 2000 Final Four, a moment of awakening in both Madison and Gainesville. Florida has made four Final Fours this century and won two national titles. If Wisconsin has completely remade its reputation since 1994, Florida has done the same — and then some.
Michigan State was a very good basketball school under Jud Heathcote, who was a very good coach… and then, starting in 1999, Tom Izzo took the Spartans to a much higher level. Michigan State — in the mid-1990s — was a very good, very reliable program, much as Wisconsin is now. Today, in 2020, MSU is college basketball royalty, a member of the ruling class. Two decades have substantially changed that program’s identity for the better.
Gonzaga is part of this group as well. The program took off in the late 1990s and — even in its worst seasons — could be relied upon to make the NCAA Tournament. In 2015, it reached the next level and is poised to continue getting top-two or top-three NCAA Tournament seeds well into the future.
We could offer some other examples beyond these, but you get the point: As great as Wisconsin has been the past 26 years, other programs have — in recent decades — substantially changed how they are perceived in the college basketball community.
Progress seems elusive… until someone comes into town and shows how it’s done. Wisconsin had Dick Bennett and Bo Ryan. Other programs have had their own resurrection artists.
Keep this article in mind on Easter Sunday.