Jason Bohannon can tell you Wisconsin has a good sales pitch to basketball recruits

Few sports powers other than the Miami Heat were built overnight.

For decades, University of Wisconsin men's basketball was nothing special. OK, the Badgers won the NCAA title in 1941. But until Dick Bennett became the coach there in 1995, winning seasons were rarities.

Bennett led the Badgers to three NCAA tourneys and a Final Four in his five years in Madison. Bennett resigned three games into the 2000-2001 season, citing burnout. The next season, Bo Ryan got the job. He had coached college ball in Wisconsin since 1984.

Ryan's reign in Madison began nine seasons and nine NCAA tourney appearances ago. That covers a 107-43 Big Ten record and three regular-season conference titles. Which is simply excellent.

Gee, why would any high school player want to play for that guy?

Well, just as Linn-Mar's Jason Bohannon did several years ago, Jarrod Uthoff of Cedar Rapids Jefferson will join Ryan's program next year. Bohannon completed his UW playing career in March and earned a business degree at the school. He has only met Uthoff once for five minutes, at a basketball camp in Iowa City a few weeks ago.

Bohannon understands why high school players listen to Ryan's pitch.

"They were always consistent in how they recruited me, not overbearing," Bohannon said this week. He's back home in Marion, and will co-host a basketball camp at Linn-Mar on Aug. 6-7 with former Northern Iowa player Ali Farokhmanesh.

"Looking back on my four years," Bohannon said. "all the stuff Coach Ryan and Coach (assistant Gary) Close told me was true, how I'd interact with the other players and how much I'd like playing there.

“The fans were great. The students were there every game. The Kohl Center was always packed to the ceiling. And we were always winning, doing things the same consistent way regardless of the situation.

“It was a lot of hard work. Coach Ryan gets players to work hard, doing everything he expects them to do. As a player, you buy into it because you see you're doing the things to become successful.”

Bohannon's career has to be a selling point for Ryan to Iowa preps. Ryan is tough on his players, but Bohannon held up his end of the bargain and kept working and improving. Thus, his participation and production grew each year.

He went from 15 minutes and 4.6 points per game as a freshman to 36.8 minutes and 11.6 points as a senior.

This column isn't meant to be an unpaid advertisement for Badger basketball. It's merely trying to illustrate what Iowa is up against, recruiting or otherwise.

Fran McCaffery can't wave a magic spell over every recruit and tell them how fabulous things are at Iowa. If they were fabulous, he wouldn't have gotten that job. Iowa is pretty much where Wisconsin was before Bennett put his stamp on that program, and maybe a notch below.

You sell an opportunity, a vision, and yourself for now as you try to gradually establish your own brand. If successful, you eventually won't need to explain who you are.

An Iowa fan told me he was going to write McCaffery a letter telling him what Barry Alvarez said when he became Wisconsin's football coach in 1990. Alvarez said he had to seal off Wisconsin's borders. He was talking about recruiting, not immigration.

But Alvarez made it a whole lot easier to keep those in-state kids at home once he got the Badgers winning.

In the meantime, Wisconsin offers conclusive proof it has a first-rate men's basketball program that is totally familiar with winning. For top high schoolers from Eastern Iowa, it isn't in another part of the world.

“It's two hours from Marion to Madison. It's like driving to Des Moines,” said Bohannon, whose commute will grow quite a bit once he decides where to play pro ball overseas, perhaps Germany.

For now, there's a considerable distance between the Badgers and Hawkeyes. It's up to Iowa to cut that down, because Ryan and company show no signs of backpedaling.