Dick Bennett's last game

Charlie, God bless him, woke up at 5:15 this morning, about 90 minutes earlier than I hoped he would. Silver lining: the Wisconsin-Maryland game from November 2000 was on the Big Ten Network.

Watching it (intermittently) was a nice trip down memory lane. I went to that game with our old friend John Koebel, who many of you know as Chez Whitey, at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee.

After the game, I got grabbed by cop for jaywalking. When trying to explain my way out of it, I called the guy "Dude," and he explained to me that he wasn't my "dude."

Anyhoo, back to the game. When Dick Bennett stepped down as Wisconsin coach after this game, it didn't come as a huge surprise to me. I remember thinking that he looked like he was having an awful time on the bench. Trying to pass a kidney stone awful. All while his team was playing a good game against the team that went to the Final Four that year and won the national championship the next year.

Maybe that's just how he was all the time, and having been in Ohio for awhile I'd forgotten. But man, did he look unhappy.

He should have been very happy. Happy with seeing Kirk Penney show what kind of big-time player he would become. Happy with Mike Kelley's defense (oh, and with his 12 assists). Happy with Charlie Wills and Mark Vershaw picking their spots.

Not happy with Andy Kowske's hair -- frosted tips.

That season turned out to be really interesting. After making that fluky run to the Final Four in March, most of the guys returned, and the 2001 team should have been pretty damn good. Maybe it would have been had Bennett hadn't stepped down to give Brad Soderberg a shot.

As it was, when we lost in the first round to Georgia State, I was sort of happy about it, because I didn't think Soderberg was the long-term answer. (Didn't think Bo Ryan was either at first, very happy to have been wrong on that count.)

One other thing: playing these Big Ten-ACC Challenge game in NBA arenas is really stupid, glad we haven't had to do that since.

One last thing: when doing a Google Image search for Andy Kowske (looking for those frosted tips), this picture showed up on the first results page.

UW-Ohio State brief thoughts

Full disclosure: I missed the first three-quarters of this because Jana and I went to see Slumdog Millionaire tonight. So I made it back for about the last eight minutes, and my dad filled me in. Hopefully I'll get a chance to watch the whole deal tomorrow, but here are some brief thoughts:

-Thought the defense looked pretty good at the end. Yes, we allowed 55% shooting. But forcing 19 turnovers offsets that. Six steals for Krabby? Mike Kelley reincarnate!

-You tell me J-Bo goes 1-for-8 and Pop goes 1-for-9, and we shoot 36%, and I tell you we lose by eight points.

-Fifteen offensive rebounds, that's partly great effort, partly the challenges you face when you play a 2-3 zone. I can't imagine the athletes Thad Matta has assembled aren't conducive to playin man-to-man, but whatever, not my team.

-Seventeen points and seven boards for Marcus, very nice for him to shoulder the scoring load today.

-Evan Turner sure would have looked nice in cardinal and white, no? Apparently he helped us recruit Diamond Taylor, which is nice, but it was down to us and Illinois and he went to Ohio State. It seems to be working out for him. He did have six turnovers.

This is another nice resume builder, but also a game we definitely should win. With our RPI and strength of schedule, a couple more wins should do it. Off until Thursday at Indiana, which is a game we absolutely can not overlook and come out flat for.

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.

Freshman starters

Reading about Jeronne Maymon's recruitment last week got me thinking: how often have freshmen started at Wisconsin? Off the top of my head, Alando Tucker was the only one I could think of in recent times. Here are the freshman starters for Wisconsin basketball in the last 26 years:

2003: Alando Tucker
2002: Devin Harris
1998: Mike Kelley
1996: Sam Okey, Hennssy Auriantal (Maymon's mentor)
1994: Rashard Griffith
1992: Michael Finley
1990: Larry Hisle
1983: Rick Olson
1982: Brad Sellers, Cory Blackwell

That's some list. Tucker, Harris, Griffith, Finley, Blackwell and Sellers were all first or second round NBA draft picks. Kelley might be the best defensive player in program history. Olson is the program's fifth all-time leading scorer. Okey was Big Ten Freshman of the Year, the only one in school history. Auriantal led the team in steals as a freshman for Dick Bennett's first team.

That's 11 freshman starters in 26 seasons, or ninein 25. Shouldn't be any freshman starters on next year's team, even though we lose two starters to graduation. That's the sign of a stable program that recruits, retains, and develops players well.

Wisconsin-Minnesota thoughts ... not worth much

All year long, I've run into friends, family and co-workers the day after Badger games and said "Didja see the Badger game last night?" All too often, the response has been "No ..." with me realizing "Oh, that's right, you don't get the Big Ten Network."

Now I know how it feels. We're at Blue Harbor Resort in Sheboygan for our annual winter family outing, spending a lot of time at the place's waterpark, which Will loves. The place has Time Warner cable, which of course doesn't have the Big Ten Network. Worse yet, the only radios we have in the joint, alarm clocks, did not pick up any AM stations. So we were essentially flying blind and deaf for today's game, tracking the score on the Internet before falling asleep.

Just woke up and "saw" us pull away at the end, good thing, because a loss to Minnesota in Madison might have ruined my weekend. Here's what I know from watching the play-by-play, box score, and Brian Lucas's courtside blog.

-Before the game I read that J-Bo hurt his leg in practice yesterday and was doubtful for today. Good thing he did.

-Love the balanced scoring, four guys scoring 11 points and one scoring 12. Six guys took between five and eight field goals attempts. On the year we have six guys averaging between 7.5 and 12.7 points per game. As we saw earlier this season, it's not just the type of scoring that leads to nights like this, but different guys going for 20-plus.

-We're really taking this "we make more free throws than our opponents attempt" thing seriously, eh? Shot 33 today?

-Glad to see we held Tollackson to four points. In one of our games last year he was scoring on us in the post really effectively, limited only by foul trouble, but he didn't really hurt us in our games this year. Could be as much Tubby's system and playing time patterns as anything.

-Pop seemed to have a soild game, although I haven't seen assist and turnover numbers yet.

-Mike Kelley was the honorary captain today, and brought his son Mike Jr. along. Nick, whose dad and stepmom are friends with Kelley's parents, tells me Mike also has four children, and that Kelley's parents have more than 30 grandchildren already. Prolific.