MADISON, Wis. - When Brian Butch graduated from the University of Wisconsin to embark on a professional basketball career, somewhere in the back of his mind he believed he would one day find a way to give back to the program that developed and educated him.

But sharing his expertise with a worldwide radio audience on Badgers basketball, and the game itself, which wearing the school's colors? That wasn’t even a pipedream.

“You know Wisconsin basketball is a family, and you’re always welcome, but I didn’t feel like I’d have a big part and be around it every day,” Butch said. “I wanted to play as long as I could. I wanted to make every tread of the tire was off, and then whatever happens, happens.”

It took time while dabbling in afternoon drive radio and professional coaching but Butch has found his calling by settling into the chair next to play-by-play voice Matt Lepay as he goes through his Wisconsin basketball’s lead color radio analyst.

“I love everything about this,” Butch said. “It’s my way of still being around the game as much as I can, promoting the University, promoting these kids and the staff, and not making it about me."

In many ways, Butch’s post-basketball career mirrors his collegiate one.

An All-American at Appleton West and a five-star prospect, Butch had a chance to contribute to the back-to-back conference champions as a freshman but felt he was a liability at 185 pounds. He elected to redshirt to grow mentally and physically. The move paid off from 2004-08, as he finished his career ranked 24th in school history in points and ninth in rebounds.

He parlayed his UW experience into a 10-year professional career, making stops in the NBA Development League, China, Greece, Japan, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, playing until his body gave out. But it wasn't long into his overseas journey that he started contemplating what the next chapter of his life would entail.

“I was sitting in Tokyo getting toward the end of my career and it was a soul searching of what am I doing?” Butch said. “What am I going to do? What’s next?”

When he tore his patella tendon playing for the Denver Nuggets in the NBA Summer League in 2010, Butch created his basketball camps to help grow youth basketball. When he officially retired after the 2017 season, he started to explore what his Wisconsin communications degree could do for him. He had been a guest on radio shows and done some blogging for the Big Ten Network but nothing substantial came from his inquiries.

He took a stab at coaching as an associate with the Wisconsin Herd of the NBA G-League from 2017-19 but wasn’t fully invested.

“Coaching isn’t where I wanted to be at with the commitment,” Butch said. “We just had a first child, and I wanted to be home. I had done this to my family for 10 years, and I wanted to be home more.”

He started small with an afternoon radio show in Appleton and did other shows with Woodward Radio, but nothing became syndicated. Seeing opportunity dry up and feedback be moot, Butch tapped into his Wisconsin connections by reaching out to former UW athletic director Barry Alvarez for guidance.

“If I was going to do it, I wanted to see if I could make it big,” Butch said. “In everything I’ve done, that’s what it was. I set up a meeting with Coach Alvarez for advice because I hadn’t gotten an audition with the Big Ten Network or got my foot in the door. Coach called (then-commissioner) Jim Delany right in his office, and Jim got an audition for me the next week.”

Butch said he scrolled through his phone contacts and talked to everyone he could who could provide insight on the interview process, reaching out to play-by-play announcer Tim Brando, color analyst Steve Lavin, and Lepay to figure out what he was getting into. The move worked, as Butch passed his audition of doing color commentary off a television monitor with BTN studio host Mike Hall.

Hired by Fox as a game and studio analyst for men's basketball, Butch thought he was set.

When news got out that Mike Lucas, who had served as color commentator alongside Lepay for football and men’s basketball since 1994, was being fired, Butch didn’t pursue the job out of respect for the long-time journalist. He couldn’t escape the job opening when a summer golf outing turned into an informal job interview.

Still wanting to call television games for BTN, Butch wanted to know if Wisconsin would be OK with him missing games here and there. Wisconsin was, which led to UW hiring former UW guard Charlie Wills to step in when Butch has a conflict. Through four months of the season, the plan has worked seamlessly.

“I’m so thankful they were willing to allow me to still do TV,” said Butch, who is scheduled for 18 TV games. “I told them it’s only fair I commit to at least 80 percent of the games. If I can’t do that, it’s not fair to the listers, the University of the kids. They were fantastic.”

Unlike calling a game in a random room at BTN headquarters to prepare, Butch and Lepay did no practice runs, using UW’s home exhibition game as their warmup live on air. They’ve done over 20 games together, with another one coming up Tuesday when Wisconsin travels to Bloomington to face Indiana and continue to grow their chemistry.

“My job with this is to stay the hell out of Matt’s way,” Butch joked. “That’s what I told myself in the beginning and I feel like that’s what I’ve done. Matt is so good that he tells me I can jump in and talk more, so the more we’ve done it the better we’ve been.”

“It sounds natural, which is good. There’s always growth that needs to happen, but Matt is so good that he makes it easy.”

Butch did a lot of winning during his Wisconsin tenure. The Badgers won the Big Ten Tournament his redshirt season, advanced to the Elite Eight his redshirt freshman year, were ranked No.1 in the country when he was a redshirt junior, and swept the Big Ten titles his final season.

The one outlier was his 2005-06 season, a year that parallels what this year’s Wisconsin team is battling through.

That year, Wisconsin started 14-2 and rose as high as No.15 in the AP poll before dropping five of six. Eighteen years later, Wisconsin was 16-4 and No.6 in the country before it dropped five of six. Butch’s team had its slide when key pieces Marcus Landry and Greg Stiemsma were academically ineligible for the second semester, while UW has lost reserves Kamari McGee and John Blackwell to injury.

Butch’s team never fully adjusted and went 0-2 in the postseason. He sees this year’s group as different because it has a better ability to recover, especially since Blackwell has returned to the lineup and McGee is expected to return from his foot injury by the postseason.

“We couldn’t get those guys back, but they’ll get Kamari back, and the loss of Kamari was so big,” Butch said. “I’ve said it a couple times, this group just has to find their mojo. They have to believe in themselves. You go through a stretch where you lose five of six, you lose it a little bit and we lost it. That’s what hurt us down the stretch is we didn’t necessarily believe we were good enough, even though I believe we could have been better.

“This group can turn that. Go get a road win at Indiana. Stack some things together. Get a home win against Illinois. All of sudden, that turns the belief in yourself.”

That's what his sales pitch will be to those who tune the radio dial to him and Matt on Tuesday, another opportunity to talk about a sport and school he owes everything.

"I’m a basketball junkie," Butch said. "It gets me so excited to sit there. I have the best seat in the house, and I don’t even have to pay for it. We get to try to teach the game of basketball in layman's terms to people who don't necessarily understand it. There's a thing of beauty to that."

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