MADISON, Wis. – A chance encounter at the 2021 Final Four set the wheels in motion for the University of Wisconsin playing a nonconference game against the No.1 team in the nation for the first time in over 40 years.
It’s the kind of game teams typically shy away from in November and December, but those teams aren’t the Badgers and Arizona, which made scheduling life a little easier for Marc VandeWettering.
The Chief of Staff for Wisconsin basketball, the director of operations and, for the last five years, the lead nonconference schedule maker, VandeWettering has been in charge of keeping alive a dying breed in college basketball: a two-game series where teams play one game on one another’s home court, better known as the “home-and-home.”
“Home-and-homes are a focus for us because we want to make sure we’re providing ours fans an opportunity in the nonconference to experience a good game at home against an opponent that typically don’t see,” VandeWettering said. “We get approached for all sorts of neutral games, but home-and-homes are always a focus first. There are a lot of historic arenas that these teams play in, so we’re going to give our guys an experience.”
Winners of six straight, No.23 Wisconsin (7-2) will measure itself against No.1 Arizona Saturday afternoon at the McKale Center in Tucson.
The Badgers have already faced the preseason favorite to win the SEC (an 80-70 home loss to No.9 Tennessee) and the Big East (a 75-64 home win over No.3 Marquette) but scheduling the Wildcats (7-0) – favorites to win the Pac-12 – means the Badgers will face the top-ranked team in the Associated Press poll during the nonconference schedule for the first time since February 1978.
While young compared to a lot of their coaching brethren, the 53-year-old Greg Gard and Arizona’s 48-year-old coach, Tommy Lloyd, can be viewed as old souls in today’s college basketball world. When many Division-1 schools use their nonconference schedule to pad their win totals with “buy games,” struggling Power-Five schools, and/or low-level tournaments, Wisconsin and Arizona under Gard and Lloyd, respectively, have taken the opposite approach.
Since Gard arrived as an assistant under Bo Ryan in 2001 and being promoted to the head role in 2015, Wisconsin’s nonconference schedule has been littered with home-and-home series. In addition to the annual matchup against Marquette, Gard has hand in scheduling series against Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Penn, Pepperdine, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Texas, Temple, Tennessee, UNLV, and Western Kentucky.
Those games were in addition to the Big Ten/ACC Challenge that ended last year and the Gavitt Tipoff Games with the Big East that began in 2015 and has included Wisconsin four times.
Lloyd is in his third season with Arizona after a 20-year stint at Gonzaga, a school that optimizes tough scheduling to make up for playing in a weaker conference. Lloyd hasn’t backed down with his aggressive scheduling approach now that he’s coaching in the Pac-12. The Wildcats have already had home-and-home series with Illinois, Tennessee, and No.2 Duke, a matchup that the Wildcats won, 78-73, on November 10 in Durham. The two schools play in Tucson next Nov.21.
In addition to scheduling Duke and Wisconsin, Arizona has created its own with three neutral site games. After playing UW, Arizona will play No.2 Purdue in Indianapolis, No.22 Alabama in Phoenix, and No.10 Florida Atlantic in Las Vegas from Dec.16 to Dec.23. Arizona already defeated Michigan State, 74-68, in Palm Desert, California, on Thanksgiving.
“It’s a challenge that I feel we need as a program,” Lloyd said in the preseason. “A lot of these (games) were maybe opportunities that came up. As we slice and dice the schedule, we felt these were the right moves. I’m excited about it.”
History shows for both coaches that a challenging nonconference schedule yields results. Lloyd's 61 wins in his first two seasons are an NCAA record for a first-time coach.
Gard is 171-95 (.643) and his .545 road winning percentage is sixth overall among active “major conference” coaches in the nation (min. 70 conf. road games coached at school) since he was hired in 2015-16.
The process of building a schedule starts with the returning personnel and that group’s potential, according to VandeWettering. In this year’s case, Wisconsin returned 92 percent of its scoring and added some depth through the transfer portal and recruiting, an encouraging sign that the Badgers could rebound from a disappointing 20-15 season.
“As we went through the spring and solidified our roster for the coming year, we all thought we had something here,” VandeWettering said. “So, let’s go schedule something to allow us to go prove it.”
Looking for that kind of quality team harkened Gard to his conversation with Lloyd in Indianapolis. Arizona and Wisconsin have played seven times and had recent history (UW beat the Wildcats in 2014 and 2015 Elite Eight in California) but hadn’t played a game on campus since the first meeting in 1962.
With the Badgers already scheduled to host seven nonconference games, Wisconsin was willing to go to Tucson in exchange for Arizona playing at the Kohl Center next season. That game will be played on November 15.
“That was really the driving force behind it,” Gard said. “We need a marquee home game next year … It just fit, and we’re in the position to take on that type of challenge.”
How many more opportunities Wisconsin and others will have to schedule these games remains unknown. The SEC will expand to 16 teams with the addition of Oklahoma and Texas, the Big 12 will also become 16 teams after Arizona and others join, while the Big Ten goes to 18 with Oregon, Washington, UCLA, and USC becoming full members next year.
Gard is a big proponent of staying at 20 conference games instead of going to 22 to maintain scheduling flexibility, while Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes wants the SEC to stay at 18. Why? So the schools can play games like the one they played in Madison earlier this season.
“Probably the worst loss we have ever had at Tennessee since I’ve been here is when they came down and beat us (68-48 in 2019),” said Barnes, who did a home-and-home with UW when he was at Texas. “I think these games are great for us. I’m concerned because as a league, with Texas and Oklahoma coming in, we’re going to have to go to 20 conference games … We still need these games. I think it’s great for college basketball … I appreciate Greg doing it because when I got to Tennessee, we couldn’t get anyone to do it. We were trying to play some of these games.”
UW’s 2024 nonconference schedule has already taken shape. In addition to hosting Arizona and traveling to Marquette, the Badgers will play a neutral site game in San Jose, Calif., against Stanford (a return game for the 2022 Brew City Classic) and participate in a multi-team event in November. If Wisconsin has its wish, the Badgers will start another home-and-home series to beef up its schedule.
“If you can get really good teams that want to do it, and we’ve gotten a heck of a lot more “no’s” than we’ve got ‘yes,’ but when you can have these types of games on campuses, I think it’s great for the game,” Gard said. “It’s a little old school, and that’s good.”
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