Fun-loving Badgers remain footloose and fancy-free in Big Dance

Published Mar. 21, 2015 9:35 p.m. ET

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OMAHA, Neb. -- There are many ways to bask in the glow of an NCAA tournament victory, but Friday night marked perhaps the first time in history a superstar college basketball trio spent it this way: By chattering incessantly while standing behind the post-game stenographer, rapt and mesmerized at the methods she used for transcribing their quotes.

In the minutes after No. 1 seed Wisconsin had dispatched No. 16 seed Coastal Carolina, 86-72, Badgers players Frank Kaminsky, Sam Dekker and Nigel Hayes began walking back to their locker room inside the CenturyLink Center following a brief postgame interview session on a podium adjacent to the court. That's when the three of them launched into a conversation about the woman in the front row, whose typing prowess had caught their attention.

What was that machine sitting in her lap? How did she type so fast? Could they go back and see it?

Badgers coach Bo Ryan, walking next to his players, said he wanted them off their feet and that a trip to the hotel was in order -- Wisconsin would play Oregon, after all, less than 48 hours later in the Round of 32. But then Ryan relented and trailed them inside the interview room to watch how preposterously fascinated they were by a simple stenotype machine.

"I thought they would never come out," said Toni Christy, the stenographer who has worked for ASAP Sports since 2005. "When they asked me if I would show them what I did, I said sure. But in my mind, I'm thinking their coach isn't going to let them come out here and look at my machine. They're going to get back to the hotel and get to bed. So when they came bounding out of the curtains, it was pretty funny. And I could see they were genuinely interested in how does that work? Very curious."

What followed in the nearly deserted and dimly lit room was this exchange:

Dekker: "What if I press a button?"

Hayes: "Oh, that's S."

Dekker: "What if I go . . ."

Hayes: "Oh, you typed a word."

Dekker: "What if I do these three?"

Hayes: "How'd you do that?"

The sequence represented a brief snapshot that encapsulated every bit of what makes this year's Badgers team one of the joys of the college basketball season. Wisconsin's players are outgoing, engaging, silly and refreshingly loose. It is a combination, players contend, that has also helped to make them one of the most talented teams in the country, with a school-record 32 victories and a real chance to win the program's first national championship in 74 years.

And just in case you think other college basketball teams hang back after games to make similar inquiries about the transcription process, Christy offers an assurance that is not the case. She has covered six NCAA tournaments and hundreds of other news conferences in the past decade. What transpired Friday?

"That's a first," she said. "And it was very cute."

In order to understand what makes Wisconsin's team tick, perhaps it's best to begin with the three players who spent part of their Friday night in that room.

Kaminsky is a national player of the year front-runner who returned for his senior season after eschewing the NBA and blogging that the pros sometimes looked "flat-out boring." The inspiration behind his nickname, Frank "The Tank," comes from the 2003 movie "Old School," in which the hapless, fun-loving Frank "The Tank" Ricard (played by Will Ferrell) is best known for ripping a beer bong and running naked through the campus quad.

Kaminsky is not nearly as wild -- he uses a $1,000 moped he purchased off Craigslist to zip through the quad -- but he may be equally refreshing in his own way. This season, he has routinely worn a GoPro vest strapped to his chest to chronicle his memorable final year of college. When asked earlier this season on senior day why, he simply said: "For the archives." Except he pronounced the word Ar-Chi-Ves for reasons unclear to anyone, which drew laughter from his teammates seated next to him after the game.

"That was hilarious when he walked out his senior night with that GoPro on," Dekker said. "I looked at my brother, and he was laughing. That's just such a Frank thing."

Dekker, meanwhile, is Wisconsin's second-leading scorer and -- like Kaminsky -- he will almost assuredly be a first-round NBA draft pick when he opts to leave school. Dekker, a junior, often describes himself as a "free spirit," is fun loving and has been one of the most quotable players on the team since he was a freshman, unafraid to say whatever is on his mind, for better or worse.

Before his freshman season, Dekker -- a die-hard Milwaukee Brewers baseball fan -- stirred a small Twitter beef with Brewers relief pitcher John Axford after he blew a save, tweeting: "Seriously. I don't want Axford to ever have the ball in his hands ever again." To which Axford replied: "personally I don't care what (a) freshman basketball player thinks!"

Dekker has become a relied-upon vocal leader on the team and took it upon himself during a losing streak last February to call out the Badgers in front of the media for being "soft," "unaggressive" and "lacking in all the categories that you need to win." That team promptly won 13 of its next 15 games and reached the Final Four.

Hayes' personality is such that it can sometimes be difficult to discern when he's being serious or facetious with his responses. He stole the show during last NCAA tournament as intrepid reporter "Nigel Burgandy," quizzing teammates on their favorite Justin Bieber songs, showcasing his dance moves in the locker room and generally acting silly for a series of YouTube videos produced by the school's athletics department.

He has a particular flair for words and said it began when his stepfather encouraged him to read as a child. His mind is lighting-quick, and he is one of the few underclassmen who has no problem challenging Badgers coach Bo Ryan when others wouldn't dare. During one heated practice exchange last season, for example, Hayes lightened the mood by calling the 67-year-old Ryan "pops," which quickly changed the entire tenor of the moment.

"I think it took one or two goofballs on the team to make everyone act goofy," Kaminsky said. "When you've got a guy like Nigel on the team not taking anything seriously, other than basketball itself, it kind of rubs off on other people and it kind of snowballs from there."

Ryan cited a story from last season in which he saw Hayes working out in the Kohl Center early one morning and praised him by suggesting that, "the early bird catches the worm." Hayes' response: "Coach, do you know that the second mouse always gets the cheese?"

"I thought that was pretty good," Ryan said. "I had never heard that one, and I hear a lot of stuff."

Saturday afternoon, Hayes returned to the podium for a news conference previewing Wisconsin's game against Oregon. He was asked the first question, about the growth he had made as a 3-point shooter in his sophomore season. Instead, he looked toward the front row where Christy, the stenographer, was sitting.

"Before I answer that question, I would like to say a few words: cattywampus, onomatopoeia and antidisestablishmentarianism."

Cue laughter.

"Now, back to your question."

Wisconsin's basketball team has not always had quite the seamless blend in its cast of characters that it has now. Otto Puls has served as Wisconsin's official scorekeeper for 51 years and has been with the program through eight coaches. What he's seen develop this season has been nothing short of special.

"The nicest thing is these guys hang out together off the court, away from home, together all the time," Puls said. "And there is not a bad apple in this whole group. There are times when on previous teams we always had maybe one or two that were acting up or what have you. We've been lucky since last year, and then the combination came back. The experience really is helping."

The blending of personalities that has taken place also has spawned an entire team filled with players willing to let loose. When Badgers sophomore forward Vitto Brown arrived on campus before last season, he wasn't sure what to make of the motley crew before him.

"I found out when I got here last year that this team is a different type of team, a different group of guys," Brown said. "Once we all got comfortable with each other, it just keeps getting better."

Now, Brown has become just another goofy piece to the team's puzzle. This week, Brown brought his Nintendo 64 -- "I've had it since I was like 3, man," he said -- and the team relaxed Saturday before practice by playing Super Smash Brothers.

"I think every time I've walked in the locker room this year, there's been guys just sitting around lounging and playing video games or playing something," Badgers guard Josh Gasser said. "I'm at the Kohl Center probably like 10 hours a day. We only practice for two or three and lift. We're always just there, a couple hours before practice, a couple hours after practice just hanging out, goofing around, playing video games, whatever it might be. I think that's something that's rare."

Wisconsin forward Duje Dukan, a fifth-year senior, said this team was unlike any other he had played on because of the jovialness and freedom players felt to be themselves. Badgers assistant coach Greg Gard noted no one was immune to a few barbs landing his way, even Kaminsky -- the best player in the country -- who will "get as much crap from everybody else as he'll give out."

"I just think that's how we are," Dekker said. "We're not like trying to put on an act or anything. We're not trying to take it too serious. We're just trying to be us, and we do what we like to do. That's what you kind of have to do. I think some people sometimes take basketball too seriously. When we get on the court, it's obviously very serious. We want to win, we want to do well. But we also have lives other than just basketball."

What will all of this mean for Wisconsin's bid to win a national championship? That remains to be seen, of course. The Badgers must play crisp basketball with a level of execution as high as they've produced all season, and that continues Sunday against Oregon. But the fact players have such trust in each other to show their true personalities off the court certainly can't hurt their chances on the court.

"It keeps the pressure off of us a little bit," Dekker said. "You've got to stay loose. The more fun you have with it, the better you'll be at it. At least that's what it's like for our team."

Follow Jesse Temple on Twitter

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