Walk-On Scout Team Turned Wisconsin Into Champions

MADISON, Wis. – Alando Tucker reached a high level of achievement and acclaim during his playing days at Wisconsin. Considering the players he faced in practice during those years in college, it shouldn't be a surprise.

Tucker worked for five years against a Badgers scout team that included players like future Big Ten all-conference players Jason Bohannon, Marcus Landry, Joe Krabbenhoft, and Trevon Hughes. He credits their impact on him becoming the school’s all-time leading scorer and leading the program to a yearly NCAA Tournament appearance.

“We had some really tough groups we played against who gave us a good look,” said Tucker, in his first season as a UW assistant. “Those teams were able to push us every single year.”

Wisconsin didn’t have that kind of talent running the opponent’s plays this past season, yet there’s no debate that the primary scout team members of guards Michael Ballard, Carter Higginbottom and Walt McGrory and forwards Courtland Cuevas and Samad Qawi, each a walk on, helped turn the Badgers into a Big Ten championship team.

The Badgers already had a thin roster with nine scholarship players to begin, a number that dwindled when centers Joe Hedstrom and Owen Hamilton were lost for the season with injuries. UW even used Tucker and Krabbenhoft (one of UW’s three assistant coaches) to run plays on the scout team but Krabbenhoft tore his Achilles’ tendon early in the season and Tucker started wearing down.

Therefore, UW relied on “veteran” guards McGrory (a junior who has averaged 4.5 minutes over his 36 career games), Ballard (a departing junior with 20 career games played) and Higginbottom (nine career games) while transitioning in junior Cuevas and Qawi during their first year with the program.

“They stepped up and accepted the challenge,” Tucker said. “It’s tough every day to play in practice and not know if you’re going to play in the game. At some point you may figure it out you’re not getting in a game, but we all have a job here. That’s something they accepted well. They never complain. They come in and work and know it’s their job on the scout team to push these (starters) to get the maximum output from them.”

The role of a scout team player is simple: get the advanced scouting report from one of UW’s three assistant coaches, study that opponent’s overall concept on both ends of the floor, study the tendencies and game characteristics of a few specific players, replicate it to perfection for the starters in practice and then watch the starters go to work on game night.

Not long after the final whistle, it’s on to the next opponent.

“It’s really tough to do,” said freshman Tyler Wahl, who had to dabble on the scout team throughout the year. “It’s tough to know a handful of playbooks at any one time, but it helps us get ready for our next opponent very well.”

Considering the academic accolades of the group, the quick study aspect may not be as hard as it seems. Ballard (2x) and McGrory are previous Academic All-Big Ten honorees, Qawi was a two-time academic honor roll at Racine Horlick, Higginbottom went to the prestigious St. Ignatius prep school in Chicago and Cuevas interned at the NBA league office in New York City in the summer of 2019.

“You truly have to know who you are playing, how he plays and try to emulate them as much as possible to give the team a good look,” Qawi said. “I play five, and I’m not as big (6-6) as any five in the Big Ten, so I’ve been able to start learning against Nate (Reuvers) and Micah (Potter). It’s been transformative. I was formally a guard, but now I have a different type of game where I can be a guard of a post-up guy.”

The group is also a source of energy throughout the game. Most of them are quick off the bench to give a high five or first out of their seat to celebrate a great shot. For Higginbottom, he took pride in doing a little dance in the pregame huddle to get his teammates fired up and loose.

“He’s a great young man that is doing really well here,” head coach Greg Gard said of Higginbottom. “He’s a great scout team guy. He brings it every day. He practices extremely hard. Those scout team guys, when they come into that position as a walk-on, it’s a lot of work and not a lot of glory. They are all very important, equally important for our success … Carter has some energy to him and he enjoys being around here.”

Ballard, McGrory and Higginbottom were all recruited as walk-ons by Wisconsin out of high school, but the journeys of Cuevas and Qawi are stories of persistence.

Cuevas played prep basketball at Madison Memorial and Madison East, helping lead the latter to the state tournament in 2015 for the first time in 25 years. His chance of playing in college took a hit when his senior season was limited due to injury, but that didn’t stop him from pursuing the Badgers.

Majoring in marketing at UW with an eye toward law school, Cuevas wrote Gard consistently throughout his early college tenure asking for a chance. This summer, the numbers finally worked in his favor.

Unlike Cuevas, Qawi was resigned to the fact that his basketball career was over years ago. He played basketball at Horlick but decided to focus on his school and long-term health after tearing one ACL midway through high school and the other playing pick-up basketball during his freshman year of college.

“Basketball was not in my sights whatsoever,” Qawi said. “Even the beginning of this year, I was just playing to play. I took it more as exercise.”

That mindset changed last summer when his knees started feeling better during his pick-up games. When he saw the email announcing an open tryout for the Wisconsin basketball team, Qawi convinced himself he had a shot. He believed it so much that he even did a “test run” in a tryout for the Wisconsin Herd of the NBA-G League a week before UW’s tryout to make sure his body wouldn’t betray him.

“I don’t want to sound cocky, but I was like, this is my chance to be on the team,” Qawi said. “I had the mindset that nobody was going to take it away from me.”

A text message following the tryout from Wisconsin basketball director of operations Marc Vandewettering, asking Qawi if he would like to meet with Gard, nearly brought him to tears.

“I was ultra-nervous, worried that he was going to bring me in to say I didn’t make the team,” Qawi said. “Coach said we have great chemistry here and he wanted me to be a part of that chemistry. Everybody on this roster wants us to win, and whatever he asked of me, it was because he wants us to win. If I could buy into that, I could fit right in. I said it was the easiest thing he ever asked me.”

His work did not go unnoticed. When Wahl was asked who the toughest scout team player was, he didn’t hesitate to point the finger at Qawi.

“This has been a dream come true,” Qawi said. “I didn’t have many expectations, but it blew all my expectations out of the water. It’s been great to be able to meet everybody, create relationships and play the game I love at a high level.”

The end results of Wisconsin’s season show the Badgers’ scout team served its purpose. The Badgers had six of the eight rotation players average at least eight points per game, leading the program to their 19th regular season conference championship, the No.1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament and a possible No.4 seed in the canceled NCAA Tournament.

While most of the work from the quintet could be seen in the production of the rotation players, each of those guys had their moments of glory.

Cuevas, Higginbottom and Qawi combined to play in 22 games, never much more than a minute but always delivering a thrill. McGrory came out of the gates firing in his first game of the season, scoring nine points (3-for-6), registering two assists and two rebounds against McNeese State.

Arguably the biggest walk-on moment came March 4 on Senior Night, when senior Brevin Pritzl told Gard to put in his good friend Ballard, who is graduating this spring, for the final minute. With his teammates practically forcing him to take a shot on the final possession, Ballard drove the lane and scored on an off-balance layup with 4.5 seconds remaining.

And in a poetic role reversal, it was the starters on the bench who erupted in wild celebration.

“It’s tough when the (starters) strap it up every night and the crowd can’t see how you’re pushing guys on the side, but they’ve been great,” Tucker said. “When they’re on the bench during the game, they’re cheering guys on, pumping them up. We talk to them about bringing energy from the bench when we’re lacking that. They are a tremendous group.”