Lucas at Large: ‘You remember the wins. But the relationships matter more.’
February 12, 2020 | Men's Basketball, Mike Lucas, Varsity Magazine
Connections among Final Four teams, current players growing over time
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BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer
MADISON, Wis. — On his official recruiting visit, Josh Gasser was sitting with his parents in UW head coach Bo Ryan's office when his mom, Joan, took a look around the room and spotted a picture on the wall that prompted her to point and tell Ryan, "That's my favorite Wisconsin basketball player."
It was her son's, too.
The picture was of Mike Kelley, the defensive-minded point guard on the 2000 Final Four team and one of the players who returned for Sunday's 20th anniversary celebration at the Kohl Center. Kelley narrated a moving pre-game video that Brevin Pritzl admitted, "Gave me goose bumps."
Gasser can relate to the source of such an adrenaline rush.
As an 8-year-old growing up in Wisconsin, he had just begun to embrace the sport when Kelley and his unsung teammates put the Badgers on the college basketball map one fateful March which was followed a year later by the Bucks making it to the NBA's Eastern Conference finals.
"Those were my first two big memories of basketball — really falling in love with the game — that's how it started," said Gasser, a fan of Kelley and Bucks shooting guard Ray Allen. "Before I knew it, Mike Kelley was calling our (Badgers) games (as a TV color analyst) and saying great things about me.
"We got to know each other well and I now consider him a friend. We text pretty often these days. His daughter underwent ACL surgery a few months back and I gave her a call to wish her well and I've been staying in touch to help out anyway that I can (Gasser tore his ACL in 2012).
"Mike has a great head on his shoulders, and he does things the right way in terms of being a parent and a coach and I really respect that out of him. He's someone I've definitely looked up to in how he has handled life from me being a kid (in Port Washington) all the way to now being in my upper 20s."
Gasser, who will turn 28 on Thursday, has another link to Kelley: He played in back-to-back Final Fours in 2014 and 2015. And he can make generational comparisons based on everything he knows about Kelley's team from 20 years ago and his knowledge of Dick Bennett's coaching acumen.
"It seems that they had a toughness and a togetherness," Gasser observed. "The same thing can be said about our Final Four teams. Yeah, we had good talent and we made plays and things like that. But ultimately what made us a really good team was how tight of a unit we were."
April will mark the five-year anniversary of Wisconsin's 2015 Final Four team. After shocking previously unbeaten Kentucky in the semifinals, the Badgers advanced to the national championship game where they lost to Duke in front of 71,149 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
"That it has already been five years to me is just crazy," Gasser said, "because I feel like I can remember every single day and every single moment of that year. I feel like it was just yesterday, but at the same time there has been a lot that has happened since then and life moves on."
That team is still as tight as ever. As is the 2014 Final Four team that lost to Kentucky in the semis in Arlington, Texas. "Unbelievable memories and we're still great friends today," Gasser said. "It's just kind of the family of Wisconsin basketball that creates these longstanding relationships."
They had three mini-reunions last spring and summer at the weddings of Gasser, Dan Fahey and Zak Showalter. "With the bachelor parties, we had six weekends when we got to reunite," Gasser said. "We were talking the other day, 'No Badger weddings coming up.' Dang what are we going to do?
"We're going to have to plan something on our own to get together."
Shouldn't be a problem.
Gasser and Ben Brust drove to Milwaukee recently to see Frank Kaminsky when the Phoenix Suns played the Bucks. Kaminsky, who's in his first year with the Suns, has been sidelined since late December with a knee injury. In early March, Gasser is planning on spending a few days with Kaminsky in Phoenix.
"You remember the wins," Gasser said. "But the relationships matter more."
On Sunday, the Badgers honored the 2000 Final Four team by wearing throwback uniforms against Ohio State. It was a sharp, clean look. And so was their play in a 70-57 victory. The pre-game video outlined Bennett's pillars/principles: humility, passion, unity, servanthood, thankfulness.
Kelley's narration made them come to life: "These words are literally buried in the foundation of the Kohl Center. Before the concrete and mortar, before the banners and lights, these five pillars set the vision for that magical run 20 years ago and they are still alive in the program today."
Do the same principles really have application in 2020?
"I think they apply now more than ever, I really do," Kelley said. "All the true teams and great players have those core values. There are outliers for sure. But Coach Bennett used to say, 'There are only a handful of Tiger Woods and Serena Williams.'
"But for everybody else to find greatness, you can do it as a team. You'll never be able to do it individually. That's how we found it. We found our little piece of greatness as a team."
Video: 2000 Final Four 20-Year Reunion
Nonetheless, Kelley was quick to concede that it was not always a smooth ride.
"As much as we romanticize that team from 20 years ago, we weren't perfect, either," he said. "Sometimes you see the best part of everybody's team especially on social media and it makes it feel like if you have some issues in your locker room, something's wrong. Nothing is wrong. That's normal."
Given some of the hits the current program has absorbed, Pritzl approved that message. "Things haven't been in our favor lately," he said, "but at the end of the day if we stick to those core values and stick together as a group, we can fight through anything and be successful."
With Pritzl's season-high 19 points — and five players scoring between eight and 10 — the Ohio State triumph was a group effort. The bench outscored the Buckeyes, 30-16. And the Badgers had 17 assists on 24 made field goals. D'Mitrik Trice had a career high eight assists (25 over the last four games).
"I just love what I've seen out of this team in the past week," Gasser said. "Just them staying together and coming together, keeping their heads straight and focusing on what really matters. There are some things you can control and there are some things that you can't.
"You always have to focus on what you can control."
Time is uncontrollable. "It's crazy how fast time flies by," confirmed Gasser, who cringed when one of the high school seniors in the UW's 2020 recruiting class was quoted as saying, 'I remember when I was growing up and I was a little kid watching the Badgers play in the Final Four."'
In 2034, Wisconsin will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Bo Ryan's first Final Four team. "When they're wearing our throwback jerseys," Gasser concluded with a sigh, "then, dang, we are actually old."
