Ask the average Badger fan about Texas A & M-Corpus Christi and without a couple of days to do research, they might not have even known the school exists. Heck, if you asked the Badgers themselves on Selection Sunday, you would have gotten the same answer. Answers might range from confusion over which team Acie Law IV plays for (the Texas A&M Aggies), mispronunciation of the school name (Corpus Crispy) or perplexity over why a team from Texas is nicknamed the Islanders (CC is a tropical destination on the Gulf of Mexico).
But ask Badgers' assistant coach Greg Gard and you'll get another answer. Gard, who has been in charge of scouting the Islanders the past few days while the other coaches concentrate on the Badgers' potential second round match ups in Georgia Tech and UNLV, has nothing but good things to say about Islander head coach Ronnie Arrow.
""Coach Arrow may not be known to the general public,"" Gard said, ""But in terms of the coaching fraternity, everyone knows what he's done.""
Arrow took over the program just eight years ago and built it from the ground up. There was no Islander basketball before Arrow got there, and right away they were Division I. And until this season, TAMU-CC had been independent. All Arrow has done is lead the Islanders to a 134-90 record in his eight seasons and an NCAA tournament in their first year as part of the Southland Conference.
The Islander head coach makes no bones about it either. While other mid-majors celebrate their berths in the NCAA tournament, his is the only team making its first appearance. And he feels free to say that it makes it that much sweeter.
""In our case, it's better than others because we've been Division I independent,"" Arrow said. ""So the recognition that the conference has helped us get is a lot more than we got when we were independent.""
It hasn't been all fun and games for Arrow and his team, though. Through the journey he's seen a former player, Lee Denmon III, shot and killed just two years before his starting point guard, Jeff Muriel, was killed in an auto accident.
But that hasn't deterred Arrow from getting this program to where it is today, preparing to play its first-round game against No. 2 seeded Wisconsin Friday in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Badger head coach Bo Ryan believes that Arrow's dedication to his players and his prior experience as a coach helped him to be unwearied by the process.
""You're going to have to go in there and go from one level to another, and it's going to take time before you can get into a league so that you can qualify for an NCAA tournament,"" Ryan said. ""You have to be patient, but he's coached enough that for him, it was just all part of the process.""
Arrow has coached enough. Before coming to the Islanders in 1999, he coached for South Alabama, where in the 1990-'91 season he led the Jaguars to a 22-9 mark, becoming the first Sun Belt team to ever go from last to first. During his time with the Jaguars, the team had a 114-93 record. And before that, he built up the program at San Jacinto Junior College, accumulating a 302-43 record.
""What he did doesn't surprise me because he built up other programs quickly,"" Gard said. ""It doesn't matter how long somebody has been in Division I If you have good players and they're well coached, you're going to be successful.""
Arrow certainly has good players. He starts five seniors and has a plethora of experience coming off the bench, but the main attraction is certainly center Chris Daniels. Daniels is listed at 7'0'', 265 lbs, and the big man led his conference in field goals and ranked third in scoring with 15.2 points per game, while shooting 59 percent from the floor. He has played well against top Big Ten competition (he scored 19 and hauled in eight boards against Purdue), and Arrow knows he can match up with the best of them.
""Not too many mid-majors have a seven-footer than can do some of the things that he can do, and he'll be able to match up against some of ya'll's guys,"" Arrow said. ""The size that is in the Big Ten is the type of size that he is, so he can match up with a lot of ya'll's players.""
Gard, who has been watching Daniels play, says he reminds him of Michigan's Courtney Sims, but says that Daniels is ""more of a physical presence than Courtney Sims was, has a better post presence and feel, better feet than Sims, better hands."" Then Gard went on to compare him to D.J. White, but with a 3-point shot.
For the Badger big men, like senior center Jason Chappell, Daniels seems like he'll be a lot to handle. But Chappell says they can draw on experience.
""We've played against a lot of big guys,"" he said. ""He'll probably be a combination of the guys we've played against.""
If you think about the big men the Badgers have seen, whether it be Takais Brown of Georgia, Aaron Gray of Pittsburgh, Al Thornton of Florida State or Greg Oden and the rest of the Big Ten forwards and centers, a combination sounds frightening.
TAMU-CC Sports Information Director Craig Merriman has seen Daniels play his whole career and knows Badger fans will be wowed.
""He rises to the occasion,"" Merriman said. ""He plays to the level of the competition. I think you'll see that come Friday.""
Whatever the Badgers do see, a loss would be absolutely devastating as far as expectations go. For the Corpus Christi players, though, the story already has a happy ending.
""These guys want to put them on the map and they're slowly but surely getting there,"" Merriman said. ""As far as the storybook ending or the fairytale or whatever you want to call it, I think we're one of the best stories in the country.""
Badger fans just hope the story ends Friday.
