What do the Badgers and Aretha Franklin have in common? A lack of R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
While Aretha eventually got her respect and fame, the Badgers have gotten anything but. Thanks to the return of everyone but Ray Nixon from last year, the Badgers began the season ranked generously high at No. 9 in the country, good enough for their highest ranking ever. The Badgers didn't shy away from the challenge however, doing only one thing after starting the season as one of the elite teams in the country—winning.
Aside from a slip-up against Missouri State, which may or may not be an actual college, the Badgers have reeled off 15 straight wins, the longest current winning streak in the country. The Grateful Red has noticed, and so has the rest of Wisconsin. Senior forward Alando Tucker is, how do you say, ""awesome baby!"" Kammron Taylor is stroking it, junior guard Michael Flowers is locking everyone down on defense, and the bench is one of the best in the country. With all of these good things going on, not to mention a more-than-stellar football season having just concluded, surely people across the nation must be scared of Madtown, right? Wrong.
Turn on ESPN, watch any sports show, read any national news stories, and the Badgers are nowhere to be seen. Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan did appear on Rome is Burning Tuesday afternoon, but host Jim Rome is known for highlighting players and teams that might be overlooked. Michael Wilbon, Tony Kornheiser, Tony Reali and many other sports journalists barely acknowledge Wisconsin even has a basketball team, let alone the No. 2 team (No. 3 in ESPN/Coaches poll) in the country. When Ohio State came to Madison and everyone saw how overrated Greg Oden is, the news the next day was purely on how bad Ohio State was—and oh by the way, they got beat by the people wearing red up in Wisconsin.
Let's examine the reasons why we are not getting enough coverage and why we should be. First of all, the Badgers' No. 2 ranking is the highest ranking in school history, which you can easily take as a good thing, but it also means Wisconsin has very rarely been an elite program, and history has a tendency to repeat itself. As much as this is true, the fact that change is inevitable is even more true.
It's the reason Peyton Manning is finally going to the Super Bowl. It's the reason the Detroit Tigers went to the World Series last year. And it's the reason the Yankees haven't won a World Series in 85 years (well, at least it feels that way). It's about time the Badgers became one of the elite teams in the country. No. 2 isn't good enough. Greedy? Yes. Warranted? Also, yes.
Florida and UCLA, both of whom were in the national championship game last year, are the only teams ranked ahead of the Badgers in the ESPN poll. Since then things have changed however. UCLA lost its three best players on a shallow depth chart to the NBA, and while the Gators returned all five starters from their National Championship team, they are playing worse. Somehow, Florida has two losses to Wisconsin and UCLA's one, and is still ranked No.1 in the country.
Well, it must be the tough teams they beat. Try again. Florida has beaten just one ranked team (Ohio State), and the other ranked team it played (Kansas) it lost to. Two games later it also lost to Florida State, a team the Badgers handled easily. Topping it off, the Gators rank just 29th in RPI.
UCLA has been playing very good basketball, but has only beaten two teams in the top 25 in both polls in Texas A&M and Washington State, who nearly upset the Bruins on their home floor. When the Bruins finally played a good Oregon team, however, they lost.
Meanwhile, the Badgers have been rolling. First they knocked off No. 2 Pittsburgh. Then they went to Milwaukee and took out then-No. 17 Marquette, and then took down No. 5 Ohio State, who may have been in mourning over their lackluster national championship performance in football. Let's review. Victories against teams in the top ten: Florida - 0, UCLA - 1, Wisconsin - 2.
I accept we don't play the most exciting style of basketball with Bo Ryan's swing offense, while Florida is in the top ten in team scoring and No. 1 in field goal percentage, but just because Wisconsin doesn't create long highlight reels doesn't mean they don't get it done.
It's about time people realized we aren't going away. I understand we weren't great last year and have the same team, but this year's squad is older and more mature, and has an incredible bench that we were missing last year. When our football team was ranked No. 4 a couple years ago, we lost, and then lost again, and we all knew we were overrated. This year in football everyone wanted to say the same thing, but we didn't lose for the last nine games and people had to accept we were actually pretty damn good.
The sooner the country can accept that we are even stronger at basketball, the better. Not only do we deserve to stop being simply a mandatory mention on sports talk forums, but we have earned and demanded respect from critics and analysts nationwide. We don't deserve to be No. 3. The numbers show we deserve to be No. 1.
We may lose to Michigan by 50, but until something like that happens, I don't want to hear another word about how bad the teams we play are. I want to hear that they may be great, but unfortunately for them, they were playing the Wisconsin Badgers that day.
