12 Wisconsin

"The beauty of college basketball," says Wisconsin coach Dick Bennett, "is the way it offers each team a chance to recruit the kind of player who will make it successful." In his five years with the Badgers, Bennett hasn't recruited the kind of athletes who tend to make other teams successful, but, then, he hasn't had to worry about his players leaving early for the NBA. As a result, Wisconsin this season will feature the four members of Bennett's first full recruiting class. "We came in together, and we're all going to leave together," 6' 8" senior center Andy Kowske says. "You don't see that too much anymore."

Nor does one often see a team that went .500 in its conference and was a No. 8 seed in the NCAA tournament reach the Final Four, but that's what the Badgers did last spring. No one is giving Wisconsin much of a chance to reprise that finish, but these Badgers are every bit as good as last year's edition was. They retain their top two scorers in Kowske and 6' 9" forward Mark Vershaw, as well as senior point guard Mike Kelley, whom Bennett calls "the ideal, unselfish role player." Kelley made just six three-pointers last season, but he set a single-season school record for steals (95) and had the best ratio of assists (3.17 per game) to turnovers (0.97) in the Big Ten.

Wisconsin lost its two most prolific three-point shooters, Jon Bryant and Duany Duany, but their replacements are experienced. Sophomore Kirk Penney is a New Zealander who played for the Kiwis at the Sydney Olympics, and sophomore Ricky Bower is a junior college transfer who is coming off a two-year Mormon mission in Poland. "We'll be a better offensive team this year," says Bennett, who nonetheless will again rely on the Big Ten's best defense to beat those teams with all the hotshot recruits. "I still think a tough, smart junior or senior can play against a very gifted freshman or sophomore."

[This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.]