The swing offense employed by Bo Ryan during his tenure as the Badger men's basketball head coach has never been among the more exciting systems to watch. But with three Big Ten regular season titles, two conference tournament titles and an NCAA appearance every season at UW, Ryan has proven that it works.
Though Ryan and the Badgers have come to be known by that slow, methodical style of offense, the former UW-Platteville coach made a name for himself with a completely different style of play. During his tenure at the Division III powerhouse, Ryan employed a fast-paced, pressuring style of play on both ends of the floor en route to 353 wins and four NCAA titles.
While Platteville relied on speed, quickness and endurance, the Wisconsin program looks for strength, size and basketball IQ when searching for recruits.
Answering yet another question about the so-called ""Wisconsin basketball"" style, Ryan emphasized the lack of a concrete philosophy.
""We just try to be on the left-hand side when the buzzer sounds,"" Ryan said after Saturday's NCAA Tournament win that put the Badgers to the Sweet 16.
The emphasis on controlling tempo, limiting turnovers and using the shot clock was developed not on an overriding philosophy of play held by Ryan and his staff, but rather on the reality that the players available to him excelled in those areas.
""I just don't understand when people always refer to ‘Wisconsin basketball,'"" Ryan said. ""I'm sure there's a manual out there that says that if you don't turn the ball over a lot you get to the free-throw line, you make your free throws, and you work hard on defense and you take good shots, if you want to call that Wisconsin basketball, amen. That is us.""
In the end, the particulars that the national media has come to define ""Wisconsin basketball"" by are particulars any coach would love to have his players take to heart.
""Any team doesn't like committing turnovers too much,"" junior guard Jordan Taylor said. ""Everybody on our team can come in and make plays and spread the floor and everybody is good at making decisions so it makes things easier.""
While focusing on fundamentals isn't flashy, it produces results. In the NCAA tournament the Badgers proved that this ""boring"" system could take down a much more ""exciting"" offensive program.
The swing offense took down an up-tempo team from Belmont and then proceeded to squeak by a similarly styled and much more physically gifted Kansas State team on Saturday night.
""If people think we're boring,"" Taylor said, ""there are a lot of channels on TV they can watch.""
As more people are beginning to appreciate ""Wisconsin basketball,"" namely the result it produces, perhaps those remotes will get a rest come tip time on Thursday night.
