Livin in the past

I was fooling around on the net yesterday and found something that is kinda cool. The Journal-Sentinel has in their archives old Wisconsin basketball (and probably) football schedules that link to the front page stories from each game. Here is one such schedule for the 99-00 Final Four team. The cool thing is that for some seasons you can just change the number in the URL and it takes you to another season.

Of course since I am always more inclined to wonder "what if" when it comes to bad memories, I had to check out the following season. Check out Soderberg's team here. Talk about massive disappointment. I forgot that team started out 9-1 (10-1 after beating IU) before ending up 9-7 in conference. What killed that team was a tendency to blow 2 posession leads in the last 90 seconds of big games. That team blew such leads at Mich State, and OSU, at Illinois (where they were up 13 against the #4 team in the nation) and, of course, against Georgia State in Boise. They also lost by 30 at IU and again to them in the one and done performance in Chicago that March.
As much as any Badger team since the 98-99 team during my Freshman year I have the most vivid recollections of this teams on court disasters.

When he got canned many people thought Soderberg got a raw deal. Indeed that team did go 16-10 after Dick Bennett retired, which is not a bad record until you take into account 2 things: 1: The fact that team was a senior laden top 10 team. Mark Vershaw, Roy Boone, Mike Kelley, Andy Kowske, Mo Linton were the senior anchors. And that team could also count on Kirk Penney, Ricky Bower, and Charlie Wills to provide a solid punch off the bench.
2: They blew so many games that they should have won. In fact, you can take 5 games from that season that cost Soderberg his job: At Illinois, at MSU, MSU at home, Indiana in the Big 10 Tourney, and GSU of which winning just 2 of them probably would have saved Soderberg's job. In each of those games he either sat helplessly as his team got outplayed down the stretch or got outplayed from the tip, in all of those games he got badly out-coached. It wasn't just Lefty's triangle and two, it was also his decision to bring in the stiff Dave Mader to play defense on the last play at Illinois only to watch him NOT JUMP in that final sequence. It was not recognizing the fact that down 3 Charlie Bell was going to take the game tying shot.
To be honest, Pat Richter had an easy decision to move in a different direction the moment Penney's shot glanced off the rim in Boise.

Anyways, the point of this post was to let everyone know how you too can re-live Badger memories when bored at work, or wherever.

GO RED