Category: Athletics

The 6-foot-6 Big Ten player of the year helped the Badgers to their first Number One ranking last month. The senior averaged nearly 20 points and more than five rebounds per game.

….Is it fair to say the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team – which was ranked No. 1 in the nation a little more than a month ago – underachieved this season?

….Can the current UW coaching staff continue to bring in the type of players that will allow the Badgers to consistently compete for a Big Ten title and advance deep into the NCAA tournament?

Jolene Anderson has never been one to stray from a challenge with the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team. Although Anderson and the Badgers stared at a 14-point, second-half deficit against Virginia Sunday afternoon in a Women’s National Invitation Tournament quarterfinal, failure did not enter their minds.

Anderson scored 22 of her game-high 30 points in the second half – including a clutch 3-pointer to increase the Badgers’ lead in the closing minutes – to lift Wisconsin to an 84-78 victory before an energetic crowd of 3,149 at the Kohl Center.

Columnist Michael Hunt discusses former Badger sports administrator Joel Maturi’s success as Minnesota’s athletic director.

If Lisa Stone’s University of Wisconsin players go on to win the Women’s National Invitation Tournament title, any medals they receive will pale in comparison to the mettle they displayed Sunday afternoon at the Kohl Center.

Details made the difference as the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team continued its postseason march.

The Badgers attacked the glass ferociously Thursday night and held off a scare from Kentucky for a 67-61 win before 2,420 spectators in a third-round game of the Women’s National Invitation Tournament at the Kohl Center.

University of Wisconsin reserve wide receivers Jarmal Ruffin and Diondrae Jenkins, neither of whom was expected to compete for playing time in 2007, have decided to leave the program.

Just more than 24 hours had passed since the UW Women’s Hockey Team clinched the 2nd Nat’l Title in a row, and fans lined up outside the Kohl Center were calling for a three-peat.

But the team is still soaking this one in.
”To win it was definately another dream come true.” Said Jr. Jinelle Zaugg.

The players say an added bonus to this win, was the location.
They played at Lake Placid, New York, the same place their Coach, Mark Johnson played in 1980, during the game now know as the “Miracle on Ice.”

Speaking of repeat champs, the UW-Madison women’s hockey team skated in dramatic fashion to its second straight NCAA championship Sunday.
Mark Johnson and his gutsy Badgers dominated Minnesota-Duluth 4-1 to win the Frozen Four in Lake Placid, N.Y., where Johnson once won Olympic gold.

This season, more than the Big Ten Conference title campaigns of 2001-02 and 2002-03 or the run to the NCAA tournament’s Elite Eight in 2004-05, established the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team at the forefront of the collegiate basketball landscape.
The Badgers established a school record for victories (30), Big Ten victories (13), reeled off a school-record 17-game winning streak, and achieved the first No. 1 ranking in school history. Along the way, there were nationally televised specials on ABC and HBO, and ESPN did an all-access piece daily from the Big Ten tournament through the NCAA tournament, which ended with Sunday’s 74-68 second-round loss to UNLV at the United Center in Chicago.

On a similar stage a year ago, Jinelle Zaugg, emboldened by the nectar of a national title, boldly pronounced Wisconsin the New State of Hockey.

….On Monday evening, moments after celebrating a second straight NCAA title with more than 600 fans, cheerleaders, band members and assorted hangers-on at a reception the Nicholas-Johnson Pavilion, Zaugg held her ground on that topic as firmly as she grasped the national championship trophy in her hands.

CHICAGO – Even though the University of Wisconsin has been eliminated from the NCAA tournament, you can rest assured that nearly everybody who follows college basketball knows all about the Badgers.

Wisconsin was one of the most publicized teams this season as networks like HBO and ESPN eagerly traveled to Madison to report on the team’s successes on the court that included winning 17 straight games, attaining the No. 1 ranking in the country for the first time in school history and winning a school-record 30 games overall and 13 in the Big Ten.

Sunday one season ended. Monday another began.

In the world of big-time college basketball, the NCAA regulates the length of the playing season but has no control over the guy who decides to get into the gym on his own and put in an untold number of hours working on his game.

This has been the Wisconsin Badgers’ time to shine.

March 20 (Bloomberg) — The longstanding practice at U.S. colleges of admitting athletes with substandard academic credentials is coming under fresh scrutiny.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has launched a review that might limit the number of these so-called special admits. At the University of Oklahoma, which just completed a four-year review of admissions, Athletic Director Joe Castiglione
says some students read only at a fifth-grade level.

Are you miffed that CBS didn’t show the opening minutes of the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team’s game Sunday?
You’re not alone.

Jill Sommers, the program operations manager at local affiliate WISC-Ch. 3, fired off an e-mail to the network blasting its decision to leave Madison-area viewers in the dark as UNLV took an 8-2 lead in an NCAA tournament second-round game in Chicago.

Coach Lisa Stone ran the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team through game-day preparation, including a 40-minute scrimmage to shake off rust two days before the Badgers’ second-round game against Arkansas State in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament.

With a long break between games, that preparation paid dividends Sunday as the Badgers romped Arkansas State 77-45 at the Kohl Center.

CHICAGO — The effusive Alando Tucker usually dominates the conversation when the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team congregates in the locker room after a game. It doesn’t matter if the Badgers win or lose, Tucker enjoys expressing his opinion on some subject.

Yet Tucker was uncomfortably quiet after seventh-seeded UNLV eliminated the second-seeded Badgers from the NCAA tournament with a 74-68 upset victory Sunday afternoon at the United Center.

The younger Badgers waited for Tucker or fellow seniors Kammron Taylor or Jason Chappell to say something, It never happened because this was an especially tough loss to absorb.

CHICAGO — After some 30 years in the business, Bo Ryan still doesn’t have the wanderlust that seems to be found in every coach’s DNA. Probably never will, either.

And hundreds of players across Wisconsin are all the better for it. Maybe even the entire game.

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Loyalty and staying power are rare traits in college coaching. Most coaches spend their careers with one eye on the next job, jumping from one school to another in hopes it will bump them up a spot or two on the coaching ladder. The boxes aren’t even unpacked before they’re plotting their next move.

Mark Johnson was involved in another championship at the Herb Brooks Arena Sunday, but this one didn’t involve any miracles.

Johnson, who scored two goals in the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s “miracle on ice” upset of the Soviet Union, coached the University of Wisconsin women’s team to its second consecutive national title with a 4-1 victory over Minnesota Duluth in the championship of the NCAA Women’s Final Four.

When it’s all said and done, no duo did more at the University of Wisconsin than Alando Tucker and Kammron Taylor.

When one of the most successful seasons in Wisconsin Badgers history came to one of most unsatisfying endings possible, coach Bo Ryan looked at his players on the court, shrugged his shoulders and went over to shake hands with UNLV coach Lon Kruger.

To Breckenridge High School in western Minnesota, it’s a horse of another color. Whoa, not so fast, partners, say Wyoming state officials. That green bucking horse and rider on Breckenridge High’s football helmets is a dead ringer for the black bucking horse and rider that is Wyoming’s federally registered trademark.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — The University of Wisconsin-Madison women’s hockey team will continue its trek towards another national title on Friday

The Badgers, the defending national champions, will face St. Lawrence in the national semifinals in Lake Placid. The team practiced on Thursday afternoon, WISC-TV reported.

If the Badgers can win on Friday afternoon, they’ll play for the national title on Sunday.

For coach Mark Johnson, however, Friday’s game is a return to Olympic glory.

Jason Chappell, the artist, T-shirt designer and man with possibly has the largest Bob Marley CD collection in the Big Ten, could win the Wisconsin Badgers’ title of Mr. Mellow hands down. Being uptight is against his nature.

As his team keeps winning in order to stay alive, Wisconsin men’s hockey coach Mike Eaves talks about the Badgers as if he’s in the World Series instead of the WCHA Final Five.

Asked about goaltender Brian Elliott’s 16th collegiate shutout, Eaves had hardball on his mind Thursday night after the Badgers blanked Michigan Tech, 4-0, in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association tournament’s opening game.

Not once – from the season opener in September through the women’s Western Collegiate Hockey Association title game on March 3 – could anyone legitimately question the focus or the desire of Mark Johnson’s players.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. – This is what Mark Johnson does every time he comes back to this place of enduring magic and memories:

He rises early and makes his way down from the hilltop hotel overlooking Mirror Lake to the main thoroughfare of this idyllic village.

He ducks into the Starbucks two blocks away, buys a medium cup of the day with a splash of whole milk.

He proceeds to walk slowly, up the street and down, with the same cosmic question in his head.

“How did we win that game?”

Nearly 200 women in the University of Wisconsin community had breakfast at Memorial Union Wednesday with a world-renowned Olympian who spoke to inspire female professionals working in a male-dominated society.

There are no such limits at UW-Madison, but Brian Rust, communications manager at the Division of Information Technology, said the computer network is “very robust” and not likely to get bogged down.

CHICAGO – While he hasn’t been cleared to play in the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team’s NCAA tournament opener Friday night against Texas A&M- Corpus Christi, injured junior Brian Butch gave the Badgers at least a small measure of optimism about his possible return by practicing with the team Wednesday in Madison.

University of Wisconsin coach Mike Eaves and his players are facing history, or so they’ve been told.

It wasn’t until the final game of Kammron Taylor’s sophomore season that he truly felt that he belonged.

MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin-Madison Badgers basketball player Greg Stiemsma has overcome nagging injuries, academic trouble and clinical depression to help propel his team.

The 6-foot-11-inch, 265-pound Stiemsma was recruited by Wisconsin when he was the star on the Randolph Rockets. Stiemsma led the Rockets to three state tournaments in a row.

Tickets to the Wisconsin men’s basketball game Friday at the United Center in Chicago are getting harder to find as the clock ticks down to tipoff, but are still available through online brokers.

While tickets through the university are non-existent, as of this morning seats still remain on StubHub.com and TheTicketKing.com for Midwest Regional first- and second-round games. Availability is shrinking, however, with only a third of the tickets that were available on Tuesday remaining 24 hours later.

With only one day remaining until the NCAA Tournament gets underway, brackets all around the country are being filled out more than crossword puzzles in anticipation of the commencement of the Big Dance.

For his work this season, Wisconsin’s Bo Ryan is the Journal Sentinel’s coach of the year.

Badgers forward Alando Tucker the Journal Sentinel’s state player of the year for the 2006-’07 season.

MADISON, Wis. — It’s a quiet, winter night around the basketball hoop where one University of Wisconsin-Madison Badgers player once honed his skills, but inside the Milwaukee family home of Marcus Landry, it’s closer to chaos.

“It’s just a big network of support; and I’m grateful for it,” said Efueko, Landry’s wife of almost one year. She lives with his father, Mark; his mother, Anita; son, Marcus Jr.; and daughter, Mariah. A brother and sister are also still at home. Somehow, despite the miles to Milwaukee between them, this arrangement is working.

The University of Wisconsin is hoping to use its bid to the Women’s National Invitational Tournament as a springboard to bigger and better things in years to come.

“For our young team and players to extend their season and experience postseason is a great thing,” said UW women’s basketball coach Lisa Stone. “I’m thrilled and very excited about this opportunity.

With a 19-12 overall record, including a 7-9 record in the Big Ten, the Wisconsin womenâ??s basketball team will be headed to the WNIT tournament, which begins this week.

The best thing about the University of Wisconsin’s humbling loss to Ohio State on Sunday is that it puts the Buckeyes in the Badgers’ rear-view mirror for good unless the teams reach the national championship game.

As expected, the University of Wisconsin failed to receive an at-large berth in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament.

However, late Monday the Badgers (19-12) learned they had received a berth in the 48-team Women’s National Invitation Tournament

The Waukee school district has settled on a new â??Wâ? logo remarkably similar to its predecessor, minus the tilt, shading, tail and prospect of a lawsuit.

Administrators began circulating the emblem late last week after months of retooling, a response to complaints that the â??Wâ? too closely resembled the logo used by the University of Wisconsin. Wisconsin holds a trademark on its â??W,â? used to market millions of dollars in Badger merchandise, and could have sued for infringement.

MADISON, Wis. — Most loyal UW fans know the Badger men’s basketball team is one big family.

This week, WISC-TV is getting to know some of their families off the court in a special series of In Depth reports on News 3 at 10: The Update, Monday through Wednesday.