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On, Wisconsin The Badgers take their shot at being the next 'Nova
Posted: Wednesday March 29, 2000 07:21 PM
It was 15 years ago this weekend -- only 15 years when you think about it -- yet it seems already like 150. The 1985 NCAA basketball championship game was so weird, so surreal that it plays now in the memory like some scratchy film from the '30s. Even while the game was happening, nobody quite believed it. Villanova, a strange team with maybe no business being there, with a funny little coach who had a lock of a plan, pulled probably the biggest upset in the history of the NCAA tournament's championship game that year. There have been other corkers -- anyone remember Duke going belly up last season? -- but none was quite so strange, quite so beautiful, quite so flat-out unlikely as Villanova 66, mighty Georgetown 64. In this weekend's Final Four, the culmination of one of the strangest tournaments ever, Wisconsin carries those same long-odds hopes. North Carolina, of course, is almost as unlikely. No one expected the Tar Heels to be in Indianapolis this weekend. Some didn't expect them to make the tournament at all. But the Heels have been to the Final Four before, plenty of times, and they have a wise old coach who knows the territory like the pebbles on a basketball. Florida, too, would be a strange champ in a lot of people's minds, considering the Gators are football first and always will be. Still, Billy Donovan's boys -- and, heck, the coach is still a kid himself -- were expected to challenge for a national title before the season started. Now they're there. But Wisconsin … that's your team. That's the only team in the Final Four that could make people evoke the name of Villanova, make people remember coach Rollie Massimino's perfect gameplan, make them remember Dwayne McClain and Gary McLain and Harold Jensen and Ed Pinckney and 78.6 percent. The '85 Wildcats -- like Wisconsin and Carolina this season, a No. 8 seed -- slowed things down against Patrick Ewing's Georgetown team, made their free throws and seemingly never got rattled. They attained near perfection, slowing the tempo down such that they took only 10 shots in the second half -- and made nine of them. Only after the final buzzer buzzed at Rupp Arena and the unthinkable was fact did anyone finally believe in Villanova. Wisconsin has that chance this year, that chance to make fact of fantasy. The Badgers are a team no one expected to be close to Indianapolis in early April. Even as late as February, no one expected them in the NCAA tournament at all. They are a brutish team of defense and only passable offense and 13 losses.
But here they are, nary a star among them, facing everyone's favorite, Michigan State, in one of Saturday's semifinals. Heck, even if the Badgers beat the Spartans -- and Wisconsin is 0-3 against MSU this season -- they're still liable to be underdogs against the winner of the Florida-North Carolina game in Monday's championship game. What makes the whole scenario even better is no one is more surprised about Wisconsin than the Badgers themselves. "I would be lying if I said that this was a goal that was really prominent in our thinking," said Dick Bennett, a basketball man through and through. "I think what happened was … we got our backs against the wall and developed a sense of urgency. And maybe that was a blessing in disguise. Maybe we learned to concentrate and forget everything else. "I don't know if it's possible [in Indianapolis]. But we're going to try." Bennett, 56, is in his first-ever Final Four after 24 years of coaching. Yet even as a heavy underdog -- as the heavy underdog -- it's still the Final Four to him. "Everything you dream about in your chosen profession I think is present in the Final Four. That is the pinnacle," he said. "The thoughts I have, having sat in the stands for a lot of years [at the Final Four], is that this is what I've dreamed of. If that sets me up for a major fall, so be it." It could happen, of course. Wisconsin could win it all, as sure as mighty Duke lost in last season's title game to an underdog. As sure as North Carolina State beat Houston in 1983. As sure as Villanova circa 1985. Stranger things have happened. John Donovan is senior writer for CNNSI.com. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.
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