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Dick Weiss

Wisconsin winning big without McDonald’s AAs

PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas– Being selected for the McDonald’s All American game is typically considered the seal of good approval for a blue chip high school men’s basketball prospect. because it supposedly translates into success as a freshman in a world of instant gratification and creates a fast track for any player looking to make a quick jump to the NBA draft.

  Kentucky coach John Calipari, which has produced 19 NBA players in the last five years and has mastered the art of the one, has nine on the  roster this year. So does Duke.

 Putting that into perspective, only one NBA team– the Charlotte Hornets– has that many.

  But if the Battle4Atlantis, the premier pre-season college basketball tournament, has taught us anything, it is that reputations are fragile and some of the best teams in the country have succeeded by taken a different approach.

   On the first day of the tournament, NBA scouts filled the Imperial Ballroom at the Atlantis Resort to watch the Carolina -Butler game and chart the progress of the Tar Heels’ six McDonald’s players– Kennedy Meeks, Marcus Paige, Isaiah Hicks, Joel Berry III, Theo Pinson and Justin Jackson. But Butler stole the show, upsetting Carolina 74-66, and exposing the Heels as a team that took a far too casual approach to rebounding and defense and only had one dependable shooter, Paige, who shot an uncharacteristic 5 for 17.
  “I went to chart the Carolina players and when I looked up at the end of the game, I found i had hardly anything written down,” one NBA scout. “the best player on the floor was Alex Barlow, a one time walk on for Butler.”
   Barlow, a senior guard, scored 17 points and put the defensive clamps on Paige, who shot 1 for 8 in the first half.
  That night, Georgetown defeated Florida in overtime in a game where DeVauntes Smith Rivera, a senior guard from Indianapolis, drained a three point game winner in the final seconds.
  “I went to watch  Chris Walker, their 6-10 sophomore forward, and they couldn’t even put him on the floor in the final minutes,” another scout said.
 It is not the end of the world for these players, whose travel team talents should eventually emerge once they learn the staples of the college game are hard work and the fact they cannot afford to take a casual approach, figuring they should be able to transfer the athletic skills that set them apart in high school into a college setting.
   The McDonald’s game has become so much politics where the selectors all too often make their choices based on watching a look at me snapshot of a player in a meaningless travel team game in large part because a major part of their resource, NBA scouts, are no longer allowed to watch high school players in the summer observation period. .
   Perhaps that is why it has been so refreshing to watch a team like Wisconsin play.
   The Badgers, who won the Big Ten last year and lost to mighty Kentucky  by a point in the national semi-finals, are 5-0 heading into the finals of this elite tournament, which has six potential ranked team. They will play Big 12 contender Oklahoma for the championship this afternoon after marquee teams Florida and Carolina play for fifth place and UCLA participates in the seventh place game.
   Neither team, it should be pointed out, has a McDonald’s All America.
   Bo Ryan of Wisconsin is one of the most successful college basketball coaches in the country. He won four Divisiion III national championships at Wisconsin-Platteville, has never finished lower than fourth in the Big Ten and finally cracked the Final Four last March. Ryan should be a candidate for the Naismith Hall of Fame, considering what he has accomplished without high profile recruits.
   “We’ve only had one McDonald’s All American Brain Butch since I’ve been here,” Ryan said. “And he was hurt at the end of his senior year after we had gotten as high as 2 in the polls.”
    “I usually get a call and then I make a drive to Chicago, La Crosse or Sheboygan to watch kids play,” he said. “Although we did know about forward Sam Dekker from Sheboygan because he attended our camps when he was young. I ‘m looking for good kids who are good students, have good parents and are fundamentally sound and are willing to work hard. I don’t care where you get your fast good from.”
     Ryan has never been affected by the rankings. He does his own evaluations, signing players he feels would be a good fit for his program.     
 When Ryan discovered 7-0 center Frank Kaminsky from Benet Academy in Lisle, Ill., he was listed as a three star recruit by Rivals and Scout. 
    Kaminsky is typical of the success stories in a program that stresses old school fundamentals and individual development. His aunt and uncle had access to the buls’ training center and Kaminsky and he used to constantly work out there from the time he was five, developing into an All State player. ,   

     Kaminsky averaged just 4.5 and 1.8 rebounds as a sophomore, then last season, he simply exploded onto the scene Nov. 19 with a school single game scoring record of 43 points against North Dakota. At the conclusion of the regular season,  he was named first team All Big Ten. Then, on March 29, 2014, Kaminsky scored 28 points and had 11 rebounds as Wisconsin defeated top-ranked Arizona, 64-63 in overtime to advance to the Final Four and Kaminsky was selected the West Regional Outstanding Player.

    Ahead of the 2014 season Kaminsky was named the Big Ten preseason player of the year and the Badgers were unanimously picked to win the Big Ten Championship.[
    Dekker, a 6-9 junior forward, had a much higher profile than Kaminsky coming out of Sheboyan after scoring 40 points to lead Lutheran to a Wisconsin state championship. He could have easily played in the big game if Wisconsin had a higher profile with the selectors, who tend to gravitate to players who are recruited by the marquee programs.
     Dekker played in 35 games with three starts as a freshman. He is one of only four true freshman to start under Ryan joining Devin Harris, Alando tucker and Josh Gasser.
     Both Dekker and Kaminsky are considered potential NBA first round draft picks. Much improved 6-8 sophomore forward Nigel Hayes from Toledo Whitmer, the most improved offensive player in the Big 10, also has a good chance to join them.
     Together, Kaminsky, Dekker and Hayes are arguably the best front court in the country. The Badgers also have experience at the guard spots with two senior starters– Gasser and Traevon Jackson, the son of former NBA star Jimmy Jackson; and enough depth to ovecome foul problems during a 68-65 victory over upset minided Georgetown in the semis. Dekker scored 17 points, Hayes acrobatic tip-in with 20 seconds left capped his 15-point day, and Wisconsin overcame a nine-point second-half deficit.
    the Badgers won despite Kaminsky going 1-of-8 — 0-for-4 on 3s, playing against the most aggressive team in the Big East.
    :”I have bruises and I was just watching,” Ryan said.
      For the game, Wisconsin had nine assists and 14 turnovers, while Georgetown had seven assists and 15 turnovers.
      “That’s how hard we were playing each other,” Ryan said.
     The Badgers hadn’t trailed in the second half this season, but found themselves down 53-44 with 11:36 left. A 22-6 run put Wisconsin (5-0) up for good, and the Badgers could finally exhale when Smith-Rivera’s 3-pointer rimmed out as time expired. Smith-Rivera, who was 5 for 5 from beyond the arc until that miss.
     This Wisconsin team, which buried UAB in the first round, is capable of being beautiful basketball. The Badgers personally remind me the old St. Joseph’s teams coached by the late Dr. Jack Ramsay in the mid 60’s in terms of spacing and sharing the basketball. “It’s funny I lived up right around the block from Ramsay when I was a kid, growing up in Chester,” Ryan said.
      But those Hawks teams, one of which was ranked pre season No. 1 by Sports Illustrated in 1966, never had a front line with this much size.

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Dick Weiss is a sportswriter and columnist who has covered college football and college and professional basketball for the Philadelphia Daily News and the New York Daily News. He has received the Curt Gowdy Award from the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and is a member of the national Sportswriters Hall of Fame. He has also co-written several books with Rick Pitino, John Calipari, Dick Vitale and authored a tribute book on Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski.

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