To turn the fight song around, No, Wisconsin.
So the plow horse makes the Derby field. The karaoke baritone gets to sing with the Three Tenors. Someone has put a flea collar in with the crown jewels, a butter churn next to the microwave.
Wisconsin is going to the Final Four.
Wisconsin hasn’t been to a Final Four since it won it all in 1941, an achievement so awesome the Badgers weren’t about to change their offense until they got back.
“To be honest with you,” Wisconsin guard Jon Bryant said, “I never thought we could do this.”
What we’ve come to recognize as modern basketball is rough carpentry to these guys. Floor burns are more common than slam dunks, and steals are more significant than open jumpers. The first-bounce rebound is considered a thing of beauty, and a loose ball is treated like a pork chop in a kennel.
They play every game as if they’ve memorized the movie “Hoosiers.” This is a team so deliberate that a police sketch artist can be used instead of instant replay.
This is throwback ball, using the bounce pass, of course. And here’s the real tipoff: Wisconsin is a team so tattoo-challenged that it has a single tattoo in its starting lineup, a team so bereft of the usual epidermal designs that blank skin serves as a team uniform.
This is Wisconsin, 8-8 in the Big Ten, eighth seed in the West, 64-60 winner over Purdue in the West Regional final, bracket-buster without apology and proud to have set basketball back to another age, Stone, I think.
“People who understand basketball appreciate and respect us,” guard Mike Kelley said. “But the majority of people don’t understand how we play or why we play as we do. It’s simple. Our style is winning.”
Kelly is the nearest thing to a star Wisconsin has, and his honors come from defense. Bryant, West Regional MVP, is a shooter who can’t get his shot, who needs as many as three screens to get open. Center Mark Vershaw can’t shoot, and forward Andy Kowske can’t rebound.
“But between us, we make one pretty good low-post player,” Vershaw said.
This is typical of Wisconsin’s mismatched pieces making the whole, like five fingers make a fist, and nearly every one of them no other school’s first choice as a recruit. This is Team Leftover as well as Team Throwback, gathered by coach Dick Bennett because, to be honest with you, these were the best he could get.
“We recruit kids who are mentally tough, who play an intelligent game, not a spectacular game,” Bennett said.
No danger of anything spectacular, unless taking a charge counts. Or fighting through screens to steal the ball. Or eliminating the other team’s star, as Wisconsin did Purdue’s Brian Cardinal on Saturday. Except for a few brief moments in the second half, Cardinal was invisible. Kelley held Purdue guard Jaraan Cornell to one bucket in nine shots.
Cardinal, so tough and unskilled he could play for Wisconsin, wept after the game, unable to respond to a question in the media briefing. Purdue coach Gene Keady scowled at the questioner.
“Have some compassion, OK?” Keady said.
Keady could have been asking for himself, for he will need compassion.
Keady’s record of failing to get to the Final Four is now none out of 17 tournament appearances at Purdue, a number large and daunting enough to diminish his other considerable success.
“All we do is try to play great basketball,” Keady said. “If that’s good enough to get you to the Final Four, that’s great, if it isn’t, you live with it. There are only four of 315 teams who make it.”
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And none more unlikely than Wisconsin.
“Since I started coaching back at Stevens Point and then at Green Bay,” Bennett said, “I’ve coached the same. You pass the ball, you give the ball to the open man, you take the open shot, you don’t take bad shots, you play defense.
“It was not until recently that I learned I had set basketball back. Doesn’t defense count? Isn’t it 50 percent of the game. You do what you believe and you live with it. And then you have your time in the sun, like today, and you enjoy it.”
Bennett, with two fake hips, climbs the shaky ladder as coach of the West Regional champions and snips the victory net.
“Today I think could have jumped up and pulled the net down,” Bennett said.
He would have had to jump higher than any of his players can.