The UW men's basketball team (5-1) will tip off against Florida State (4-1) at the Kohl Center tonight with more on the line than just a non-conference victory, as the No. 12 Badgers also will look to reverse both the Big Ten's fortunes and their own in the annual ACC/Big Ten Challenge.
Started in 1999, the Challenge pits each Big Ten team against an ACC opponent over the course of a two or three-day period and deems the conference with the most victories the winner. The Big Ten has never won the Challenge, and Wisconsin has only won twice in the seven years it has taken place. However, UW head coach Bo Ryan said at his Monday press conference that the tide could easily turn, using the MLB as an example.
""I watch the National League and American League in the baseball All-Star Game go through some streaks where it seems like the one league is never going to win another game,"" Ryan said. ""Then all of a sudden they would make a strong run. So that's what we have to do in the Big Ten—maybe we can make one of those pushes.""
The ACC won the Challenge 6-5 last year, as the Badgers lost to Wake Forest for the third time in as many Challenge matchups between the two teams. Florida State, on the other hand, has a four-game winning streak in the Challenge.
Ryan said he wasn't sure if the Challenge has a ""pure scheduling [process] where all the factors are the same each year,"" but said it is great in that it provides a guaranteed competitive game on Wisconsin's schedule every season.
""We have several highly ranked or high-RPI non-conference teams on our schedule anyway, but this is one that we don't have to worry about—it's always going to be there, so that's what I like about it,"" he said. ""If we had one of these with each conference, or three or four or five different conferences, it would be fine with me.""
Though others have complained that the Badgers have never played Duke or North Carolina in the Challenge, Ryan said the teams they have faced—Wake Forest, Georgia Tech and Maryland—have been formidable.
""That's up to [the schedulers] who they want to put us with, and whoever comes out I go ‘Oh, good.' I've never had it come out and go ‘Oh, that's bad,'"" he said.
Ryan referenced the 2002-'03 season, when UW played the Demon Deacons in the Challenge, to illustrate how a seemingly insignificant game early in the season can be a lot more intriguing in retrospect.
""Wake Forest only won the ACC that year, and we won the Big Ten, so little did people know in that early stage of the non-conference season what two opponents they were watching,"" he said. ""So, you look at Florida State and you say, ‘Look what they have back, look how talented they are'—that's a team that could be there at the end of the year too.""
Despite the potential importance of such a game, a victory is not especially crucial for the Badgers and the Big Ten in the grand scheme of things, according to Ryan.
""Everybody has their own issues that they're working on, trying to get their teams ready for conference play, so there's a lot of other things out there that we deal with that get a lot more attention,"" he said.
