When the buzzer sounds on Monday night, when the "One Shining Moment" video is playing, the national title trophy is presented and the nets are cut down in Lucas Oil Stadium, it'll all be tinged with a hint of sadness.
This sadness comes from two places. One is that, no matter the outcome of this potentially great Wisconsin-Duke matchup, we won't get to see this Wisconsin team's beautiful, perfect offense in action ever again.
The other is that we'll never again get to experience the improv comedy act that has been the Badgers' news conferences during their road to Indianapolis.
I'm not sure which one I'll miss more. If I'm being honest, it's probably the news conferences.
Have you ever seen a group of 18-to-22-year-olds having so damn much fun in the pressure-packed atmosphere of the NCAA tournament? Have you ever seen a team's 67-year-old coach serve as the ringleader instead of the party pooper, as Bo Ryan has with this team? Have you ever seen a sports team that looks so serious on the court also look like such a bunch of goofballs off it?
At the title game news conference on Sunday, Wisconsin players sat next to their coach. They were stretched out, their feet peeking from underneath the curtain that covered the podium. There was Frank Kaminsky, America's most lovable (and perhaps only) dork athlete superstar. There was Josh Gasser, who spent most of his time giggling and whispering things to Sam Dekker, who laughed along with him. And there was Nigel Hayes, who has become mildly famous for his obsession with big words that trick the stenographer. (Sunday's words: "Logorrhea. If you don't know what that means when you look at it, you'll laugh. And succedaneum.")
"We're just a fun group of guys, as you can tell by us sitting up here not getting any questions," Kaminsky said. "We're just sitting here joking around, because there's not much else to do. Just trying to have as much fun as possible with all of it."
In a world where we take sports far too seriously — where we talk about a game as a do-or-die situation, where we discuss NFL games as if they are warfare, where we dissect every play and every verbal miscue by famous athletes and then complain when they usually give us the most blasé, anodyne quotes possible — shouldn't we lift up this Wisconsin team as much for what it does off the court as for what it does on it?
Look: What the Badgers do on the court is simply a joy to watch. This team has the best offensive efficiency rating — 128.5 points per 100 possessions, according to KenPom.com — in the 14-year history of efficiency statistics. Kaminsky has been an absolute revelation, a goofy-looking kid who has turned himself into a monster on the basketball court. Dekker has morphed from a guy who could be great but sometimes disappeared into a big-time player, with a career-high 27 points in the Elite Eight against Arizona and the clutch 3-pointer that downed undefeated Kentucky. Hayes complements those two perfectly with his inside-out game. Gasser is a lockdown defender, and Bronson Koenig might be the perfect ball-control point guard for the Ryan system.
But as much as I've enjoyed watching these guys on the court, I've enjoyed watching them even more off the court. There was Kaminsky on live television on Selection Sunday, caressing the Big Ten championship trophy as if it were his lover.
There was Kaminsky again, pulling off a trio of dance moves that are indelible images on our minds: the Taylor Swift YouTube dance video before the season, the Pitbull song he danced to in March, then the on-court, not-sure-what-you-call-it dance he did when his team made the Final Four.
There's Ryan, who described to reporters the difference between now and the first time he was playing for a national title, in 1991 with Division III Wisconsin-Platteville, by describing the different breakfasts he had.
"The morning of the game, I had a cream doughnut and a diet pop," Ryan said. "Now we have the best French toast, pancakes, omelets. We have people cooking omelets. What else do we have? Bacon. Turkey."
A player down the podium shouted something.
"Did he say prunes?" Ryan said.
They all cracked up, again.
There's all the fun this extraordinarily talented team has had with its lack of so-called elite talent. When Gasser was asked on Sunday about playing his second straight game against a team with nine McDonald's All-Americans, he said this: "Bronson sent out a tweet a little while ago that said we have seven Wisconsin All-Stars. They don't have any of those."
There's Hayes, who has had his running joke going with stenographers lately. He also was caught on a live microphone telling a teammate during their Sweet 16 news conference that the stenographer was beautiful. He also told a joke to reporters during an interview session at the Final Four.
"Why can't you hear a pterodactyl use the bathroom?"
He paused for emphasis.
"The 'P' is silent."
And if you ask the players who's the funniest one, it's not even Hayes. "We all consider him very corny," Koenig said. Koenig picked himself as the funniest player on the team, but the consensus among his teammates was sophomore reserve forward Vitto Brown, who most consistently has his teammates in tears of laughter.
Oh, and the multi-talented Brown also happened to be one of four students from the Final Four schools to sing the national anthem before Saturday's games. (He killed it, by the way.)
How can you not fall in love with these dudes?
And here's the kicker: It's not like they are messing around during practices or games. The Badgers are as intense of a team as you can find. But the fact they are able to draw a line between serious work and serious fun means there's no team more loose on this enormous stage.
I asked Kaminsky if the goofiness off the court helps them be a better basketball team on the court.
"It definitely does," Kaminsky said. "We've grown so close over the years, and that really translates to the court."
On Sunday at the podium, Dekker spoke about how this team has kept its authenticity while experiencing the enormous success of the past two seasons. I will end on his words. I want people to listen to his words, because they are incredibly wise words from a 20-year-old college student and words that all of us should pay more attention to when we get far too wrapped up in the seriousness of sport, which is, when it's all said and done, just a game.
"You see us joking, goofing around, having fun, because that's who we are and we don't want to change," Dekker said. "We also think it's super cool what we are doing, and we're having fun with it. We're not too cool for the stage and not trying to be bigger than what this is. As a team, I think we've embraced the idea that this is bigger than ourselves and something we should cherish, soak in and take advantage of. These are memories that are going to last forever."
Amen, brother.
Email Reid Forgrave at reidforgrave@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter @reidforgrave.
