I was watching the Wisconsin-Purdue game today on ESPN when Bob Wischusen and Dan Dakich broke out the statistic that Wisconsin had won 19 or more games four times in its history (which dates back to 1898) before Bo Ryan came along in the 2001-02 season, and they've done it every year since.
It was at least the second time this year I've heard that statistic, and it smelled funny both times. So I decided to do some research (if looking at the program's Wikipedia page -- grains of salt being tossed -- counts as research) and found it smelled even worse than I thought, for a few reasons.
1. It assumes that Wisconsin basketball was terrible that whole time -- The Badgers actually had a pretty illustrious history through the late 1940s, with 14 conference championships and a national title in 1941. Granted, they only won 19 games a couple times during that span (1915-16 and 1940-41), but they didn't play much more than that. For example, in that 1940-41 season, the national title season, they were 20-3.
Things kind of went downhill after 1947, if you consider no postseason tournaments for 42 years and no NCAA bids for 47 years to be downhill. Nearly 50 years of futility is pretty impressive, but it pales to more than 100 years.
Which brings me to my next point.
2. Ryan finished what others started -- I mentioned two of the four 19-win seasons; the other two were in 1998-99 and 1999-2000 (22 both years, with a Final Four appearance in 2000) under Dick Bennett. They also won 18 in 2000-01, the year before Ryan became head coach. Overall, the Badgers made four NCAA tournaments and one NIT in the six years Bennett was there, if you count 2000-01, where Bennett retired just a few games into the season and Brad Soderberg coached the team the rest of the way.
In other words, while Ryan has taken the program beyond what anyone had done since the first few decades of the 1900s, the turnaround had started before he got there.
3. Why 19 or more? Why not 20 or more? -- This one should be easy. Ryan's win totals at Wisconsin have been 24, 25, 25, 30, 31, 20, 24, 25, 26, 20 (so far this year) ...
... 19 and 19.
Even though the "four times winning 19 games before Bo Ryan" would have still been four times winning 20, it doesn't sound quite as impressive to say Ryan has won 20 games every year but two in Madison. It's equivalent to NASCAR announcers saying "Driver X has seven straight top-13 finishes;" that means there's at least one 13th-place finish in there.
Today's inexplicable loss to Purdue notwithstanding, Bo Ryan is a terrific basketball coach, and it doesn't take overblown, manipulated stats to show it.
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