Oates: For Badgers, it's Final Four or bust

CHICAGO - They have only themselves to blame for the expectations that hover over them like Greg Oden in the paint.

Had the University of Wisconsin Badgers won, say, 22 games and earned a No. 8 seed in the NCAA men's basketball tournament, no one would be thinking a trip to the Final Four at Atlanta is the only way this season can end on a successful note.

But the Badgers didn't win 22 games, they won 29. They also rose, however briefly, to No. 1 in The Associated Press poll for the first time. And they all but forced the school to send its basketball record book back to the printer for an update.

When you add it all up, it comes out to a school-record No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament - and greater expectations than any UW team has ever carried into the postseason.

For good reason, too. Though the national media broke off its love affair with UW a few weeks back and local fans are nervous after two losses to Oden and top-ranked Ohio State cost UW the Big Ten regular-season and tournament titles, the Badgers generated the expectations with the greatest season in modern school history. Starting today with their NCAA opener against Texas A&M- Corpus Christi at the United Center, the Badgers must live up to those expectations or the season will be a failure in the eyes of many.

That's as it should be. This is not UW's 2000 team, which put together a great stretch of basketball and came out of left field to reach the Final Four.

No, this is a team with true Final Four ability. It has experience, size, depth and a go-to guy in senior forward Alando Tucker. To not make it to Atlanta after the season it has had would - and should - be a disappointment for all.

Even the Badgers agree with that.

"Final Four," senior guard Kammron Taylor said when asked what would close out this season the right way. "I mean, that's what we set our eyes on at the beginning of the season. That's our goal right now. We know we have to take it a game at a time and to get there we have to win four games . . . but I really feel a Final Four will make this a very successful season."

Taylor has teammates who don't even want to settle for that.

"There's not a team in the tournament, I don't think, that wants to just make it to the Sweet 16 or the Elite Eight," junior guard Michael Flowers said. "Every team in the tournament wants to be able to hold up that trophy down in Atlanta. So that's how far we would have to go to be successful."

Flowers' thinking is a sign of the times. Not all that long ago, UW just wanted to be asked to the Big Dance.

Since their NCAA breakthrough in 1994, however, the Badgers have morphed from a team that hopes to pull an upset or two to a team that has a target on its back. This year, the target is bigger than ever despite the recent spate of poor shooting that has caused UW to become a trendy upset pick among the national media know- it-alls.

UW's potential road to the Final Four isn't easy, starting with Texas A&M- CC, which looks ominously like one of those athletic, senior-dominated small schools that pulls off a huge upset or two every March. Should they advance to the Midwest Regional final, the Badgers' likely opponent would be defending NCAA champion Florida.

"I don't want to make predictions or anything like that," junior center Greg Stiemsma said, "but I don't think anybody's going to be satisfied with anything less than a national championship game. . . . We didn't accomplish the first couple of goals we had, but this is definitely the start of our last one and we don't want to let ourselves down. We feel like we've let some people down already by not winning the Big Ten and coming up a little short in the Big Ten tournament. We've got to get at least one goal. If it's the big one, we'll take it."

It's never easy getting the big one. Even for great teams, things have to break right. But the truth is there is a small pool from which this year's champion likely will emerge and second-seeded UW is in the mix. Since 1988, only one school (fourth-seeded Arizona in 1997) has won the title that wasn't a one, two or three seed.

"We have to finish off strong," Tucker said. "We've put in a lot of work and we did a lot of good things early in the season, but ultimately it comes down to how you do in the NCAAs."

Which means the real story of this season will begin today.

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