Bo Ryan Doesn’t Deserve Credit For Stubborn Player Practices

Apr 6, 2015; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Wisconsin Badgers head coach Bo Ryan speaks at a press conference after the game against the Duke Blue Devils in the 2015 NCAA Men

Wisconsin Basketball had every reason to walk away from Monday night’s championship game with their heads held high. They came within inches of achieving the championship goal formed in their minds a season ago, succumbing to a loaded Duke team after overcoming the undefeated Kentucky Wildcats. Bo Ryan and his boys should be celebrating how far they came in 2015 after a crushing loss last season.

But everything spilling from Ryan’s mouth post-game reeks of sour grapes. In between showering praise on Frank Kaminsky and the overall resilience of his squad, he found ways to take shots at everyone, from officials to general practices of his coaching peers. His comments on “rent-a-players” stood out as particularly bitter:

"All the seniors that I’ve had — hard to say the word. But every player that’s played through the program, okay, we don’t do a rent-a-player. You know what I mean? Try to take a fifth-year guy. That’s okay. If other people do that, that’s okay. I like trying to build from within. It’s just the way I am."

There’s a few ways to take this; it isn’t the first time Ryan has commented on the practice of accepting fifth-year graduate transfers with remaining eligibility. He was critical of the process in 2012, in spite of his university’s football team being aided by the services of fifth-year transfer QB Russell Wilson. Part of this is just a set-in-his-ways reinforcing his feelings on a rule he’s known not to like.

But in light of his team’s defeat at the hands of the Blue Devils, powered primarily by three stud freshman, the primary read is of Ryan’s distaste for the current college landscape. To that, there’s really only one thing to say: tough shit, Bo.

Every year, there’s a coach or a program who feels scorned enough by the one-and-done prospect funnel that he decides to speak out against the system. Coaches of big-time programs are mostly seen in  two camps: the “building” coaches (like Ryan) who are averse to talent turnover year after year, and the group that embraces the system for what it is, cycling in top-level prospects year after year. The former is always criticizing the latter for what they see as cheating the game and the players out of the “correct” way to do things.

Ryan is in some ways antiquated but far from stupid — he knew exactly what he was doing having this discussion after a loss to freshmen-led Duke. He is framing his style of recruiting and team-building as appealing to morals and tradition, not just competitive merit. As has been the case for much of his tenure in Durham, Mike Krzyzewski is morality’s foil, a black-market huckster cutting into the success of Ryan’s family owned and operated business.

The irony is that Coach K was once viewed in a similar light as Ryan in regards to his recruiting process. “The Duke Way” earned Krzyzewski plenty of high-level recruits over the years, but there was a belief that he lost out on some “elite” recruits post-2000 because he wanted players who were committed to sticking with the program for multiple years. Slowly, Duke’s program shifted to an approach that combined their beliefs with an acceptance of the landscape. K has nabbed one-and-dones like Kyrie Irving and Jabari Parker (along with this year’s likely-to-leave group) while also having an endless cupboard of  Plumlees with which to annoy America.

Krzyzewski adapted his program’s ethos because he came to a simple conclusion: there are no invisible style points tacked onto your tournament run if you win with a certain style of recruit. One of the faces of the college game had the humility to accept that without top-level, “rent-a-player” talent he was doing himself and the university a disservice.

For Ryan, that juice isn’t worth the squeeze, though his own practices have their pitfalls. While it’s not necessarily his intention, his style of building necessitates that players spend multiple years in an exploitative NCAA system, passing up future earnings for the promise of learning on the court and off.

To that end, the Badgers under Ryan have failed to live up to their end of the bargain on the education side; they can lay claim to the third-worst overall graduation rate in this year’s tournament field, and the very worst for black players. This is further amplified by his crowing in the media about other institutional failings. Take for instance a blurb from the lead-in presser for last year’s edition of Kentucky-Wisconsin:

"The people in this state here are crazy about basketball, Ryan said. They realize they didn’t invent it, like some other states believe. What I like about the Wisconsin fans, they understand these are student athletes who are actually here for the purpose of an education first and playing ball second."

Not only was that an unnecessary shot at another university and (more broadly) the state of Kentucky, it’s a disgrace given Wisconsin’s inability to clear educational hurdles under Ryan. Passive-aggressive jabs that allude to his opponents have come prior to and after defeat, and they’re hardly tolerable juxtaposed against his shortcomings as a supposed gatekeeper for basketball and education.

Bo Ryan is frustrated like any other person would be after coming so close to a championship — he has every right to be upset with defeat. But his insistence that this is only about how he likes to do things is a farce filled with holes. He doesn’t want to adjust the way he constructs his teams, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but crying foul whenever he runs into a program that does it differently is distasteful and petty. If you can’t close the deal the way you want to do things, maybe it’s not the system that’s the problem.