Mike O’Melia wasn’t the best player on the 1962 University of Wisconsin team that upset top-ranked Ohio State and snapped the Buckeyes’ 47-game, regular-season winning streak, but he ran the show.
“He was like the quintessential point guard,” former Badgers athletic director Pat Richter said Monday night. “He handled the ball. Good defender. A real playmaker.”
O’Melia, the captain of the Badgers’ 1964 squad, died Saturday of unknown causes. He was 63.