MADISON, Wis. – Josh Gasser usually knows what to expect when he sees an eager fan in Wisconsin gear coming up to meet him.

Since playing his last game with the Badgers almost 10 years ago, the Port Washington, Wis., native gets plenty of thanks for how he represented the program or questions about his career. He even gets told by some fans that the current team at the time needs him, which makes him chuckle considering how he’s traded in basketball for a career and raising a growing family.

But one thing seems to come up with regularity: a magical 40 minutes from April 4, 2015, etched in time.

“The Kentucky game probably stands out the most,” Gasser said.

A 71-64 victory over previously unbeaten Kentucky in the national semifinals was an ultimate team triumph. The Badgers had NBA stars in Sam Dekker and Frank Kaminsky, old veterans like Gasser, Duje Dukan, and Traevon Jackson, young up-and-comers in Nigel Hayes and Bronson Koenig, and key reserves that tied the loose ends together.

All those players experienced the Final Four the previous year, when it lost to Kentucky by one point at the same stage of the tournament, only to run it back with unfinished business.

Many of those players will be in attendance tonight when this year’s Badgers host No.9 Arizona (8 p.m./Peacock) and will be a part of multiple celebrations honoring the 10-year anniversary of their historic run and honoring Hall-of-Fame coach Bo Ryan with a banner in the building’s rafters.

Both the 2014 and 2015 Final Four teams will be honored, which is convenient because the teams are practically the same and partially sad because it’s a group unlikely to be seen again in this era of college athletics.

“Everybody had a little chip on their shoulder that was hard to come by,” Gasser said. “In today’s day and age, it would have been a bunch of guys who wouldn’t have been on that team. They would have transferred, gotten paid more money, something would have happened.”

It didn’t take long for Gary Close to turn his disappointment into excitement. The former Wisconsin assistant coach doesn’t remember how long he bemoaned the Badgers’ heartbreaking one-point loss to Kentucky in April 2014 (‘we win that game, we win the national title,’ he says) but he vividly recalls looking

They also had the burning desire to win after getting heartbroken by the one-point loss to Kentucky a season earlier.

“We appreciated what we accomplished because it’s a bear to get as far as we got, but I thought we had a shot to be pretty good again,” said Close, who coached at UW from 2003 to 2016. “We just had to turn around and do it all over again.”

Guard Ben Brust was the only player not returning because he exhausted his eligibility. Players could still transfer to other schools at the time but in most cases with the punishment of having to sit out a full season.

There were no rumblings of departure, leaving UW with a deep frontcourt. Kaminsky was on the short list of preseason national player of the year candidates (an award he’d eventually win), Dekker was starting to see his talent blossom, Hayes was ready to leap forward after a solid freshman season, and Dukan was returning for his redshirt senior year.

UW’s backcourt was just as good. Jackson was returning as the team’s starting point guard with a four-star recruit in Koenig ready as his backup. Gasser also returned for a fifth season after a torn ACL forced him to redshirt two seasons prior.

The puzzle fit well to the tune of 36 wins and sweeping the Big Ten regular season and tournament titles because it was cultivated over several seasons and offseasons. While the coaching staff kept adding pieces in recruiting, the team's core had learned from each other for several seasons to build off-court chemistry and a dynamic on-court rapport.

“The team and the confidence they had, all those guys back, (a national title) was the intent,” Gard said. “We didn’t talk about it as a staff much, but when you have a player-led team that has so many seniors and so many good players on it, they drove the ship themselves.”

UW won 36 games in 2015, 27 coming by double digits. The Badgers won eight tournament games by an average score of 10.5 points and returned to the Final Four after Kaminsky (29 points) and Dekker (27) in an 85-78 victory over the Wildcats in Los Angeles.

“Arizona could have won the thing both years we beat them; they were that good,” Close said. “We took the next step, and they didn’t because they lost tough games to us. We had a good team. We had pros. We had a lot of talent and guys who knew how to play the game, play hard. We knew we were as good as anybody else.”

Over 1,900 college basketball players entered the transfer portal in 2024, a number that seemingly grows every year and a stat that makes it hard for a coaching staff to build and develop homegrown rosters. The Badgers have seen firsthand how quickly young depth can be erased. A year after UW’s 2022 Big Ten title season, its frontcourt was crippled when forwards Ben Carlson and Matthew Mors transferred out.

This offseason saw UW's leading scorer (A.J. Storr) and a three-year starter (Chucky Hepburn) both leave for large NIL deals. The Badgers brought in three new transfers to replace them, and Gard has said part of the goal during the nonconference schedule was largely about learning about his roster.

“Chemistry comes with time and being dedicated,” said graduate transfer John Tonje, who leads the team in scoring at 17.7 ppg. “It’s very important to take the time to get to know each other on and off the court. It does take time. We’ve been doing well ... We’re going to learn as a team and keep improving.”

When asked if his 2015 team would be intact if today’s rules were present a decade ago, Gasser isn’t so sure.

Would Dekker, pushed and chastised by Ryan for not living up to his potential early in his career, have left for a better environment? Would Kaminsky have stayed after averaging only 1.8 and 4.2 points per game in his first two seasons? Would Hayes, who spoke openly and loudly about NIL compensation, have left the program looking for a big payday? Would Dukan have explored the transfer market in search of a starting role instead of playing as the sixth man?

All are possibilities, and any of those decisions would have altered Wisconsin’s championship DNA.

“There were so many guys who were critical to our team who didn’t get a lot of minutes,” Gasser said. “Vitto (Brown) was critical to our chemistry and camaraderie. Guys have different motives. Winning is important to everybody, but some guys really want to make it to the NBA and make as much money as they can. Some guys really want to get an education. There are so many different things people want and it’s hard to accommodate that.”

That’s part of the reason Gasser is looking forward to getting together with so many of his teammates, a group of players whose chemistry built over several years on and off the court led to one of the program’s most extraordinary seasons.

“We had 16 guys stay there for four years together,” Gasser said. “There might be a team that wins the national championship at Wisconsin one day, but I don’t think they’ll have what that team had in terms of chemistry, going through the battles together, and relationship.”

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