LOS ANGELES — As he stood in the batter’s box and stared at the opposing pitcher, Lance Randall believed his only focus was making contact and not tripping on his way to first base.
He never thought the kid from Grant High School would one day be the head basketball coach, and his boss, at the University of Wisconsin.
“He struck me out a few times,” Randall said smiling. “He was much nicer during hunter safety (classes).”
There’s little debate that the offseason addition of John Tonje from Colorado State has yielded massive dividends and a lot of notoriety for the Badgers, but Randall's quiet hiring and wealth of head coaching knowledge have impacted multiple areas of the roster.
“He’s a very detail-oriented guy,” guard John Blackwell said. “He’s helped me for sure with the details that sometimes you don’t see in the game. Off the court, he’s a great guy to talk to, knows a lot of stuff, and been around the game for a while.”
“A while” is an understatement when describing Randall’s coaching history. The 52-year-old has coached and succeeded at every level. He won two state high school championships as the head coach of Oshkosh West. He was an associate head coach at UW-Stevens Point when the Pointers won a Division III national championship. He had been the head coach at three universities - Webster (1997-2000), Lindenwood (2015-19), and Saint Leo (2011-15, 2019-24) - where he left as the program's winningest head coach.
It made Randall an attractive candidate for Greg Gard after assistant coach Dean Oliver’s contract wasn’t renewed following last season. Believing that he would need to shake up his staff to mirror the changing college basketball landscape, Gard brought in a coach who had experience in virtually every aspect of building a program in 30 years of coaching.
“I try to fill in whenever it’s needed and whatever coach needs,” Randall said. “Whether it’s emotional support, x’s and o’s, recruiting. Having been a head coach, I can see where coach maybe needs more room, maybe when I need to withhold advice and let him have his space. I’ve been there. Those nuances are what a good assistant does and doesn’t do.”
Most importantly, Randall knew the pressures and stresses of being a head coach in the NIL world.
Despite being in one of the biggest Division 2 leagues in the country. St. Leo wasn’t allowed to have NIL contracts, while other schools in his conference, according to Randall, were paying “significant” NIL deals to prospective athletes.
That made the transfer portal critical to Randall. Before the creation of the transfer portal, Division-1 athletes had to sit out a season when transferring to another Division-1 school but could play immediately if transferring down to a lower division. The players who didn’t want to sit were integral to his roster building.
He couldn’t miss his player evaluations either. While some schools in his league had 15 full scholarships, Randall said he had 10 scholarships at his disposal that the staff could stretch by awarding partial scholarships or players get academic scholarships.
“You could get a really impactful player in the spring if you were disciplined and you held back some scholarships,” Randall said. “You had a way better understanding of what your team needs versus trying to guess two years out and getting a commitment from a rising junior and saying this is going to be you in three years. It was a good balance for us to build our team with freshmen and some spring transfers from Division 1 and Division 2.”
Randall has been a huge part of Wisconsin’s revamped recruiting approach. While recruiting high school players is still the top priority, Randall has teamed with assistant head coach Kirk Penney to start recruiting overseas.
Since Randall has joined the staff, Wisconsin signed 6-11 Serbian forward Andrija Vukovic in June, added 2025 New Zealand guard Hayden Jones in July, and signed 6-10 Italian forward Riccardo Greppi after Vukovic’s signing fell through.
Randall’s past connections of being the head coach and vice president of basketball for the Pertemps Birmingham Bullets in England, an assistant coach for the Kosovo national men's basketball team in 2017, and the head coach of the Great Britain Basketball U20 men’s team this past July gives him a unique perspective.
“It’s important to stay disciplined in this era of the portal,” Randall said. “It’s making sure we have roster space and money to fill it exactly. The ability to be in the mix for the type of guy you want, the position we want, and the level of guy that we want, that’s unique.”
After decades of being responsible for the final decisions, Randall has enjoyed his new seat on the bench. Still comfortable giving his opinions and ideas within a game, Randall has been able to jump right in with his self-deprecating demeanor and become comfortable giving advice or acting as a player’s sounding board.
It’s made his transition easy and been more fun than striking out in Little League.
“I’m surprised as how amazingly coachable our guys are,” Randall said. “These guys have done a great job putting together a group of great people who care about each other, care about this program, and winning. You aren’t sure what the egos are going to look like on this level in the era of the transfer portal, NIL, and ‘me’ stuff. That has not permeated this program. It’s still about the name on the front of the jersey.”
“Wisconsin basketball stands for doing it the right way. For me, coming here was the chance to be a part of something special.”
_________________________________________________
*Chat about this article in The Badgers' Den
*Check out our videos, interviews, and Q&As on our YouTube channel
*Subscribe and listen to the BadgerBlitz.com podcast (as seen on Apple, Google, Spotify and wherever you listen to podcasts)
*Follow us on Twitter: @McNamaraRivals, @TheBadgerNation, @_Perko_, @seamus_rohrer, @DonnieSlusher_
*Like us on Facebook
