Frank Kaminsky's unheralded rise typifies Wisconsin
LOS ANGELES - The story of the Wisconsin men's basketball program's unlikely and sustained success is best illustrated by a skinny high school recruit who in the summer of 2009 rarely got off the bench for his AAU team. That is, when the team bothered to take him along.
That kid was Frank Kaminsky, now a 7-foot center for Wisconsin, a candidate for national player of the year awards and the star on for the top-seeded Badgers who will play No. 4 seed North Carolina on Thursday in the Sweet 16 at Staples Center. Back then he was 6-4 and lost amid high-profile recruits playing for the Illinois Wolves.
That summer Kaminsky became the lone wolf when the coaches decided to leave him at home as they traveled to a national tournament in Kansas City. He was told to lift weights, jump rope and work on his skills if he wanted to get off the bench, recalled Kaminsky's father, Frank Sr.
"He was crying the whole way home," Kaminsky Sr. told USA TODAY Sports. "I agreed with the coaches 100%, and I got upset with his crying. I told him, 'You either quit crying and do what they've asked you to do or go play soccer.' "
How Kaminsky ended up at Wisconsin and developed into a likely NBA lottery pick illustrates why the Badgers have reached the Sweet 16 seven times since 2003 and qualified for the NCAA tournament every year since Bo Ryan took over as head coach in 2001.
Kaminsky was not among the top 200 national recruits as rated by the scouting services. In fact, none of Wisconsin's past six recruiting classes ranked better than 45th — and yet over that same period the Badgers reached the Sweet 16 three times and the Final Four twice.
"It's incredible," said Jerry Meyer, director of basketball scouting for 247 Sports and a one-time assistant coach at Vanderbilt. "It's a testament to what a great program it is as far as developing players and finding those guys who have fallen through the cracks."
Factor in Wisconsin's relatively modest recruiting expenses -- an average of a little more than $59,000 a year from 2010 to 2014, trailing schools such as Youngstown State, Kent State and Middle Tennessee State -- and it is remarkable how the Badgers have been among the nation's top teams.
But Ryan seems to thrive in finding players who fit a system noted for its blue-collar flavor.
"We're just looking for guys who are willing to play on a good team, competitive team, that are disciplined, understand my philosophy of efficiency on offense and stinginess on defense and are willing to buy in," Ryan said Wednesday. "Frank is one of those guys that we knew right away he was our kind of guy."
Not quite. In 2009, Wisconsin was among the schools that scarcely noticed Kaminsky, who was overshadowed by Nnanna Egwu, a center coveted by Big Ten schools, including Wisconsin.
"We all chased Nnanna pretty heavily," said Howard Moore, then an assistant at Wisconsin and most recently head coach at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Frank was kind of the afterthought."
But Moore thought again after losing Egwu to Illinois and a friend told him that Kaminsky was starting to develop during his junior year of high school. Moore did some research. He discovered Kaminsky was the son of a former men's basketball player who is 6-10 and a former women's volleyball player at Northwestern who is 6-1. Excellent pedigree, Moore noted, and then he went for another look.
To his surprise, he discovered Kaminsky, then 6-7, playing point guard — by necessity because the starting point guard was injured.
"I was really intrigued by that," Moore said, and he was just as intrigued when he watched Kaminsky match up against Jabari Parker, a frontcourt player who later spent one season at Duke before going to the NBA.
Kaminsky had 19 points, 10 rebounds and five blocks while leading Benet Academy to a victory against the Simeon High team led by Parker.
"You really saw the legitmacy of what Frankie could do," Moore said.
With Kaminsky still largely under the radar, Moore persuaded Ryan to offer Kaminsky a scholarship before the summer, when college coaches would have a chance to evaluate Kamisnky during the AAU circuit.
"Not very many schools had a lot of faith in me," Kaminsky said Wednesday. "When I was getting recruited, Wisconsin was the first one, and I can't be more grateful to the university for that."
Although no overlooked player developed as dramatically at Wisconsin as Kaminsky has, this has become something of a tradition.
Wisconsin drew double-takes when it signed Traevon Jackson after the son of former Ohio State player Jim Jackson failed to get an offer from the Buckeyes. Jackson is now Wisconsin's starting point guard. The Badgers signed Nigel Hayes when only mid-majors were showing interest in the forward. He's also a member of the team's starting lineup. And Ryan had only New Mexico to beat for forward Duje Dukan, who developed into a key player.
"We've gone after a lot of players who have kind of said no, and we've recruited players that have said yes," Ryan said. "I think the ones that have said yes, there haven't been too many where I've received a letter that they said they didn't enjoy their experience."
Contributing: Steve Berkowitz
