Bo Ryan has done more with less -- what can Wisconsin's coach do with more?
(Editor's note: This article was originally published in November 2014 as Bo Ryan was embarking on what would become his best season ever as Wisconsin coach. We are republishing it on the heels of the news of his plans to retire after next season.)
MADISON, Wis. – Bo Ryan likes to tell stories.
So I’m going to let him.
It’s a story about his father, Butch Ryan, who passed away a little more than a year ago, at age 89. It’s a story about that gregarious pipefitter and high school basketball coach from near Philadelphia, the father who shaped the son and in turn shaped the current impressive state of the Wisconsin basketball program.
And it’s a story that Bo Ryan has loved to relive in recent months, after he made his first Division I Final Four on what would have been his father’s 90th birthday.
I was in Madison recently to talk with Ryan, a guy who ranks up there with Rick Pitino as one of the best storytellers in big-time college hoops. The interview will air next week on FOX Sports 1 as Wisconsin begins a new season in an unfamiliar situation: Instead of a scrappy underdog, the Badgers are now an overwhelming Big Ten favorite; instead of a team that’s coming off yet another Sweet 16, the Badgers are now a team that’s hoping for its second straight Final Four.
Sure, I went to Madison wanting to find out how Bo Ryan expects returning players like Sam Dekker and Frank Kaminsky and Nigel Hayes to cope with the pressure of being ranked third in the AP preseason poll. But more than that, I wanted to find out what it was about Ryan’s past that made him one of the most consistent college basketball coaches of the present, with a 14-year streak of NCAA tournament appearances and a hugely efficient system that some describe as “boring basketball” but I’d rather describe as “winning basketball.”
So I asked Ryan to tell me a story – a story about his father, some moment from his childhood that helps explain how he coaches today.
Sit back. Listen. I’ll shut up for a bit. The story will tell you something about the character of his always-fundamental, increasingly talented Wisconsin program.
“One thing that I’ll never forget about my father is a Little League game where he didn’t want to coach me but he was asked to coach me,” Ryan began. “The head coach of my Little League team had to work second shift, which, you know, was 4 to 12, so he asked my dad if he would coach just one game while he had to work that shift.
“So my dad’s coaching us in Little League, and we’re coming to the bottom of the last inning, the last three outs. We came off the field, and some of the guys didn’t run off the field. Some of the guys came in with their heads down because we were losing, 11 to 4.
“So my dad told the little bat boy who was the brother of one of my teammates: ‘Go put the equipment in the bag. We are done. We’re leaving. You guys don’t want to play this. We are out of here.’ So a couple of the guys on the team, they are like, ‘Your dad’s kidding, right?’ I said, ‘Well, you know, I’m not real sure.’
“So we start putting the bats and the balls in the bag and the helmets, and guys on the team start to cry. They’re like ‘Mr. Ryan! Mr. Ryan! You can’t! We have three outs left! That’s not the end of the game!’
“And my dad’s like, ‘Wait a minute. If you’re going to come off the field like that, if you’re going to show that kind of attitude, then that means you guys have lost the game. And if you are going to act like that, then we are not even going to compete. You are done.’ And my dad starts to walk out of the fence, off the field. And the other guys are begging. One guy grabs him by the arm, and he’s begging, he’s begging. So of course, my dad gives in. He said, ‘All right, all right. If you really feel that you want to do this and it’s in your hearts, we can do this.’
“So a couple of guys bunt, get on. We play a little small ball. And what was even more fun was I had a chance to get a hit off the fence to bring in the final runs. And we win, 12 to 11. And if you could have seen these teammates of mine, these kids, how they were jumping up and down – they thought my dad was the greatest psychology worker in the world.
“I really wasn’t sure if he was going to let us get those three outs. But he did. And some of those kids told me years later what an effect that had on them. If you’re going to compete, compete. We don’t do things halfway.”
As he was telling the story, Ryan was sitting in the Kohl Center on a recent afternoon, not long before the most talented and experienced team of his long coaching career was to begin a season as an overwhelming favorite to win the Big Ten and a fashionable pick to make a repeat appearance in the Final Four. It’s more than half a century after Bo Ryan’s father got into the heads of a bunch of Little Leaguers on that ball field near Philadelphia. But when the 66-year-old Ryan talks about his father, his eyes light up. He’s not just reciting a story. Instead, it’s as if he’s reliving one of the thousands of meaningful moments about the man who shaped who he is today.
His has been one of the most unorthodox routes among the elite modern-day college basketball coaches. Today’s young, ambitious coaches are often just out of college and immediately trying to get on the fast track to a big-time coaching job; that was not Ryan. (“For some of us, you know, it’s a little longer journey,” he laughed.) Forty-two years ago, Bo Ryan got his first coaching job: Brookhaven Junior High School in Delaware County. He’d had a high-paying job at an oil-refining company, got drafted in the Army, then decided coaching was his calling and took an enormous pay cut to become a teacher. His big break came when he became a Wisconsin assistant in 1976, but the Legend of Bo Ryan really took hold in 1984, when he moved his family to the small town of Platteville, Wis. It was there where Ryan spent 15 years building Wisconsin-Platteville into one of the top Division III basketball programs in the country, winning four Division III national titles that included two undefeated seasons.
When he brought that scrappy Division III style to Wisconsin after a two-year stay at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, it was with a well-formed basketball philosophy. This is where the people who dislike the traditionally plodding pace of Wisconsin basketball – a tempo that, it must be said, increased with all the elite offensive talent on last season’s team – really show their contempt. It’s a style of basketball that values efficiency and points per possession – newly popular statistical measures that Ryan has been paying attention to for decades – over points and speed.
One of Ryan’s longtime assistants told me one of Ryan’s favorite coaching aphorisms is, “Be good at the things that don’t take talent.” Heard one way, it sounds like one of the many backhanded compliments people throw at Ryan’s teams: that they’re “fundamentally sound,” that they’re “consistent,” that Wisconsin has “system guys” who “develop as upperclassmen.” It’s that old reputation about Badgers hoops that they’re big, slow, white upperclassmen, guys who can shoot, guys who can win within this system, guys who’ll make the Sweet 16 but no further.
Heard another way, though, it’s an extension of the philosophy Butch Ryan taught his son’s Little League team a lifetime ago: Work harder than everyone else. Work better than everyone else. Do things all the way. Compete.
These things do not sound very sexy. They sound very Bo Ryan. They sound very … Wisconsin.
“If you take care of the basketball, if you block out, if you make the right passes, if you defensively work with your teammates on rotations, if you do the little things, then the big things will come,” Ryan told me.
Last year’s team did all these Wisconsin-like things, and then it did a thing that we haven’t come to expect from Wisconsin: It made a Final Four.
Can Bo and the Badgers do it again?
Absolutely.
Look, things are pretty crowded in the top couple tiers of college basketball. But the greatest part of college basketball is also what makes it so tough for coaches like Ryan -- the unpredictability of March. Wisconsin is undoubtedly in the top tier, along with bluebloods Kentucky, Arizona and Duke. If I were picking my Final Four right now, I’d put Wisconsin right there. Is it a foregone conclusion that Wisconsin will still be around in April? Of course not. Do the Badgers have as good of a shot as anyone? Yes.
If they do, it will be because of the consistent, fundamental philosophy of Bo Ryan, which can be traced back to his father, the man who traveled with his son to every Final Four since 1976, holding court in the hotel lobby and bringing a load of Philly cheesesteaks to the hotel to share with whomever popped by.
“If I block you out after a shot is taken and I’m on defense, if I get my body between you and the rim, how much talent does that take?” Ryan told me of his basketball philosophy. “I didn’t have to jump high, I didn’t have to run fast. What I had to do was be disciplined enough mentally to put you in a position where you couldn’t beat me for that rebound. If I take care of the basketball and I don’t turn it over, I don’t have to be the greatest ballhandler in the world, but I have to be consistent and I have to be disciplined, I have to learn my angles, I have to learn height of the dribble around the pressure, little things like that.”
He stared at me.
“Now did that really take physical talent?”
Nope, it didn’t. Those are the things that Wisconsin does best. The scary thing is that this season, the Badgers will be doing all those things they always do, but they’ll be doing them with an enormous amount of talent.
Email Reid Forgrave at reidforgrave@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter @reidforgrave.
