MADISON, Wis. — Charlie Wills can still recall sitting in the locker room at halftime of several early-season games 10 years ago getting chewed out by a first-year coaching staff for not executing a gameplan that players couldn't yet fully comprehend.
Wills, who had played on Wisconsin's Final Four team just two years earlier, was a senior for the 2001-02 season — Bo Ryan's first as the Badgers coach — and he couldn't help but wonder: Was this really how his last season of college basketball would end?
"They were like, 'Why aren't you guys getting it?' And we were like, 'I don't know,' " Wills said. "It's so frustrating to be there because you felt like you knew what to do but it wasn't happening."
The 2001-02 season was one in which Wisconsin lost four of its first five games and seemed destined for the bottom of the Big Ten standings with a makeshift roster that included only eight scholarship players. The rest of the players consisted of former track athletes or guys plucked straight from the intramural leagues on campus.
Yet in perhaps one of the most miraculous and unexpected turnarounds in the history of Wisconsin basketball, the Badgers found their stride and won a share of the Big Ten championship. It marked the first conference title at Wisconsin in 55 years and continues to be a source of pride to Badgers fans.
On Sunday, members of the 2001-02 team were recognized at halftime of Wisconsin's game against Penn State to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of that memorable season. Wills was among those on hand to receive a standing ovation from a sellout Kohl Center crowd.
The way that Wills' senior season began, he never would have guessed an improbable reversal of fortunes lay ahead.
Wills and point guard Travon Davis were the only seniors on that team, and Ryan represented their third coach in four seasons. Wisconsin lost four starters to graduation off the previous team and was further ravaged by injuries and transfers.
Ricky Bower transferred to BYU and Julian Swartz left the program for personal reasons. Latrell Fleming was forced to give up the sport because of a heart condition and Andreas Helmigk tore his ACL in the preseason.
All of those obstacles, coupled with a new system and unknown expectations for the players, put the Badgers in a hole right from the start. They began the season 3-6 and lost three straight games in late November. Two of those three losses came at the Big Island Invitational in Hilo, Hawaii, to Weber State and Hawaii.
"When we went to Hawaii, it was a train wreck," said Wills, who sells real estate in the Madison area. "Every game we played, we turned the ball over. We couldn't score. We couldn't play defense. It's like we were re-learning basketball all over again."
Davis said he had his doubts when Ryan took over the program after spending just two seasons coaching at UW-Milwaukee. Those doubts were heightened when the Badgers played poorly early in the season. But he soon began to realize that Ryan's swing offense and zest for tough defense perfectly fit the style of the players that season.
"We had a coaching staff that believed in us and we had guys on our team that believed in each other," said Davis, a salesman for a pipe valve and fitting distributor in the south suburbs of Chicago. "The sky was kind of the limit. I think that we accomplished quite a bit."
Ryan used the same starting lineup for all 32 games that season: Davis, Wills, Dave Mader, Kirk Penney and Devin Harris. Mike Wilkinson and Freddie Owens were the only players to see significant minutes off the bench, as Ryan went with a seven-man rotation for much of the season.
The turning point in the season, players said, came on Dec. 22, when Wisconsin dispatched in-state rival Marquette 86-73. The Golden Eagles, led by Dwyane Wade, were ranked No. 14 in the nation at the time. Penney scored a career-high 33 points for Wisconsin.
That performance helped pave the way for Wisconsin to knock off Tennessee, Illinois and Michigan State over the next few weeks, and the Badgers began to brim with confidence.
"We were good basketball players before we got here, before Bo got here," Wills said, "so we just needed to believe in those skills again."
Penney was the Badgers' leading scorer that season at 15.2 points per game. Harris was second at 12.3 and Wills third at 10.2. Their offensive production helped spark Wisconsin to a six-game winning streak to close conference play, and the Badgers went on to finish 11-5 in the Big Ten to clinch a share of the title for the first time since 1947 — the same year that Ryan was born.
"It got guys believing," Ryan said of that season. "And what it really did, as I've said a lot of times, I just didn't realize how hungry the Wisconsin fans were for a championship. There is something about a Big Ten championship that, I guess, wasn't on the lips of the people in the neighborhood, and it sounded good. So that was fun."
Wisconsin advanced to the NCAA Tournament, where it would lose in the second round to eventual national champion Maryland. The Badgers finished the season 19-13. They have won at least 19 games in each of Ryan's 11 seasons and haven't finished worse than fourth in the Big Ten. And the 2001-02 season started it all.
"There's been a lot of life lessons I took away from that championship team, which is how to overcome the odds when things are stacked against you," said Mader, an insurance salesman in Neenah, Wis. "You set your mind to it, you can do a lot of things.
"It's really a great underdog story. That's what makes it so special."
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