Remember 1998?

A fact I heard many times before, during, and after the Badgers' loss to Illinois on Saturday was that Wisconsin hasn't lost four games in a row since the 1998 season. It's a season I remember well -- my senior year in college, the first year of the Kohl Center, and the last year we didn't make the NCAA Tournament.

There is absolutely no parallel between this year's team and the '98 team. The '98 team lost Ty Calderwood before the season started, which killed any momentum built by the surprising run to the tournament the year before. Dick Bennett played a bunch of young guys heavy minutes that year -- Mike Kelley, Andy Kowske, Mark Vershaw, Maurice Linton. They took their lumps, but those lumps paved the way for a three-year tournament run for that class, punctuated by the Final Four run in 2000.

This year's team, while often described as "young," starts two seniors and two juniors, veterans of five NCAA Tournament games and countless important Big Ten games. No injuries have taken down important players. Promising underclassmen are getting minutes, but there's little suggestion that they will shine brighter in the future than Marcus Landry, Joe Krabbenhoft, and the other old-timers are now.

What could turn this season around?

-A win against Purdue. Bo talked earlier this week about how Pop needed to get his mojo back, and he's right. But it's really the whole team that is missing its mojo, and one big win over a good team can start the pendulum swinging the right way.

-Jason Bohannon gets some steals that lead to fast-break layups. Which would, in turn, build his confidence on his jumper -- he's shooting just 38% from the field.

-The Pop-J-Bo-Taylor three-guard lineup leads to more better dribble penetration, which leads to easier looks for Landry and Krabby.

-Rob Wilson takes Tim Jarmusz's minutes and provides a much-needed energy boost. Why isn't Rob playing more? Early returns on him were so promising, and it doesn't seem like he's been horrible in his limited minutes lately.

-Keaton Nankivil shoots more, and starts hitting the 17-foot jumpers that Greg Stiemsma made so often last year, the shots that demoralized opposing defenses.

-Krabby continues to score in double figures. This development surprises me, in a good way. If you would have told me that Krabby would have 16 points, 12 rebounds against Illinois, there's no way I think we lose that game.

-Jon Leuer's post defense improves.

Really, the first one is the most important. The Badgers just have to put together a good, winning effort against a good team that washes away the memories of Minnesota and Iowa (Purdue and Illinois were excusable losses). College sports teams ride such emotional roller coasters that all these kids need is a nudge in the right direction. They get that chance tomorrow.

Badgers-Gophers: A '97 classic

March 8, 1997 is a special day for me. It was the day the Badger basketball team beat Minnesota at the Fieldhouse in a dramatic game to clinch a birth in the NCAA tournament. It preceded a great pull-out section we put together for the Cardinal, and propelled a few of us to a memorable trip to Pittsburgh.

And the Notorious B.I.G. was killed that night.

The Big Ten Network brought me back to that day by replaying that game, won 66-65 by Wisconsin, on its recent Wisconsin day. Watched it last night, and here are some thoughts:

-Starting lineup for Wisconsin: Ty Calderwood, David Burkemper, Sam Okey, Sean Daughtery, Paul Grant. That's a big lineup, like ours this year before Flowers was reinserted into the lineup, probably too big and slow to win big.

-Daugherty would have been a good fit in the Swing offense. His game was similar to Butch's, but he was smoother and Butch was more assertive.

-Grant was somewhat clumsy at times, but really athletic and pretty jacked. Not too hard to see why the NBA made him a first rounder. Just checked, and he played 111 minutes in his NBA career, and interestingly had five years between stints with the Bucks and the Jazz.

-Burkemper was rocking some Hasselhoffian chest hair.

-Minnesota had a really good team, so deep and balanced. Courtney James was a stud. Sam Jacobson was an awesome athlete. Quincy Lewis was just flashing what he would become. That doesn't even mention Bobby Jackson, the best of the bunch.

-All that said, looking at Clem Haskins makes my blood boil. He and the athletic department that enabled him got what they deserved.

-Calderwood's shot wasn't pretty, but it was courageous. That kid was just a winner, flat-out. You could see his importance to our program in how the team did the next year when he was injured - the last losing season we've had.

-Did you know Mike Kosolcharoen's dad was an Olympic swimmer for Thailand? Ahh, Special K. My memory's fuzzy, but didn't we do a point-counterpoint in the Cardinal debating whether he should be starting (when he was), with Gitter taking the point that he shouldn't be? And didn't Mike call Gitter up to share his opinion?

-Man, did the Fieldhouse get loud. Always thought the move to the shiny new Kohl Center would mean a diminished home court advantage. Good call.

-The Badgers played great defense in that game, but it looked different than the great defense we play now. It was much more frenetic and scrambling than our current scheme, and probably more than Bennett's usually was. Minnesota was the first and only opponent to score 60 points in the Fieldhouse that year, that's impressive.

-I really like that on the Badgers' last offensive possession, which ended with Calderwood getting fouled, Bennett didn't call timeout. Trust your kids, let them play.

-Okey, Okey, Okey ... what could have been. I wonder how he would have fit in under Bo, or Stu Jackson for that matter.

There were times when I'd go "Huh" or "nice shot" and Jana would say "I thought you were at this game." True, but I didn't remember every last bounce of the ball. I remembered the winning free throws and steal, but that's about it. That's what's great about this series on the BTN, and why I can't wait to watch the other games.

Pittsburgh post

Don't know why Olson chanted "Pittsburgh post! Pittsburgh post!" in a comment on the blog last night. Maybe it was because Coppin State was competing in the play-in game. Maybe he took a charge from Sam Okey in a rec league game.

Maybe it's because the game in Pittsburgh is the only time I've seen the Badgers play in the NCAA Tournament, which starts tomorrow, but this is as good a time as any to mark the 11th anniversary of this memorable experience.

The whole thing started on the last Saturday of the regular season (think it was the last year before the Big Ten Tournament), when Wisconsin upset #2 Minnesota to basically clinch a spot in the tournament. That game ended with me hugging Milinovich; the day ended with me hugging an Ole English 40. The next morning, I was in the Cardinal office working on our mammoth Big Dance preview section (16 whole pages!), when Millie walked in and said "They shot Biggie." With East Coast-West Coast tensions in the rap community simmering, this was inevitable, but no less sad.

Throughout the course of the day several of us made plans to road trip it wherever the Badgers went, which ended up being Pittsburgh. It was me, Olson, Milinovich, and Millie's friend Garza, who worked with him at the Nitty Gritty. Garza and I didn't have credit cards, which meant we couldn't drive the rental car, which worked out well for us.

We left late Thursday afternoon headed for the Steel City, and Erik and Mike drove through the night in less-than-ideal conditions. I remember the precipitation teetering between rain and freezing rain, and made light of the fact that the thermometer was toggling between 32 and 33 degrees - "Ice! Rain! Ice! Rain?" To which Erik barked "Shut the f$&* up! It's not funny!" Erik eventually forgave my distractions and introduced me to pre-"Closing Time" Semisonic.

We pulled into Pittsburgh at the crack of dawn and ate breakfast at a restaurant that seemed shady, and headed to the arena. The place, where the Penguins were still playing at the time, had to be one of the more decrepit facilities the Big Dance was held in at the time, a real dump. Erik and I went to the press room, I opened up an orange juice and a notebook to prepare pregame notes, and promptly fell asleep, waking up 45 minutes later with spiral notebook grooves indented in my face, and my notebook covered with drool. Very professional.

Went to press row courtside about an hour before the noon tipoff, and went to work on a foreign journalism paper I was writing about Benazhir Bhutto. Got a lot done there. Our game against Texas went about as expected. We were a 7 seed and they were a 10 seed, although consensus was those should have been switched. Dick Bennett was mad at Ty Calderwood for not eating his vegetables at the team meal or something like that, and benched him to start the game. Two minutes or so later, with the Badgers down about 25-0, Ty came in. Reggie Freeman and Kris Clack were just too much that day, and the Badgers' feel-good season was over.

But not our fun in Pittsburgh. Next we saw Coppin State beat South Carolina in what I believe was the second #15-#2 upset in tournament history, a really exciting, feel-good story. Every time I hear the name Fang Mitchell, as I did when CSU made it back to the tournament this year, I think of that day. Texas beat Coppin by one in the second round.

The night session was also good, with New Mexico, Millie's second-favorite team for I forget what reason, beat Old Dominion, which featured fans with funny Southern accents ("He woked!" = "He walked!").

The capper was Louisville beating UMass, which was one year removed from the Marcus Camby-led run to the finals. The highlight of that game, arguably of the entire trip, was the Louisville dance team, which was legen ... dary (more legendary than this picture I found). Let's put it this way: not one guy in attendance left to relieve himself at halftime. Millie made one of the more poignant comments I've heard, one I'd repeat if I wasn't relatively sure my mom would be reading this post. I wrote about the Cardinals dance team in the Cardinal the next week, and a few weeks later, getting carded buying beer somewhere in Madison, the guy noticed my name and said "I've seen the Louisville dance team before ... oh my god are they hot!" (Note: Louisville won its sixth national dance title in 2007.)

That night we went out for an evening of Iron City Light and Garza trying to pick fights with Pitt undergrads. After I had gotten done getting fresh with a cannon (details still fuzzy), we made our way back to the hotel, where Erik snuggled with a doll bearing the likeness of his girlfriend and future wife, Molly. Weird.

On the drive home we stopped off in South Bend to pay homage to Rudy Ruettinger and took photos of Touchdown Jesus. It should be noted that Olson, in his first attempt at sports photography, came back with some terrific shots, including an Okey dunk.

Why bring all this up now in such detail? It's a reminder that not so long ago, a trip to the tournament made an entire season worthwhile. Once in the postseason, we didn't do much winning of note - it was the extracurriculars that made it fun as much as anything. A return trip the next season was not something you took for granted. The 1998 team lost Calderwood early and Okey halfway through and finished with a losing record. Figures, my senior year.

Of course, the 1999 team overachieved and righted the ship, and we're now sporting a 10-year tournament streak, one of the longest in the nation. In a decade's time we've gone from "just happy to be here" to being disappointed by anything less than a Sweet 16 appearance. That's OK, raising the bar is how you achieve more in life. But don't get spoiled, and don't forget to try an Iron City Light along the way.