Of all the accolades attached to Wisconsin basketball head coach Bo Ryan’s name — three Big Ten season championships, two conference tournament championships, nine consecutive years in the NCAA Tournament and Time Magazine’s Scariest Scowl of the Decade Award — one stat is rarely included when it comes to defining Bo’s ginormous impact on Wisconsin basketball.

It is this stat that has caused me to defend Bo and his “boring” brand of basketball (or, you know, beautiful for people who actually understand the game) in more columns than I care to count. It is this stat that originally comforted me even after the horrid Cornell loss to end the season. This stat makes missing out on star recruits Vander Blue, Evan Turner and Manny Harris tolerable for me when other fans bitch and whine.

Here it is. The magical answer to how awesome Bo Ryan really is:

From 1960 to 2001, the Wisconsin basketball program won 533 games and lost 606. In conference play against supposedly similar competition, the Badgers managed 246 wins and a whopping 442 losses. Opposing players could hit up State Street the night before, stumble back to the hotel after bar close, forget to bring their PF Flyers with them to the Field House and STILL comfortably handle UW.

Since Ryan has been at the helm, UW has racked up a 217-82 overall record and a conference best 107-43 slate in the Big Ten. Put in a better context, that means Ryan has won .726 of his regular season games compared to Wisconsin’s .467 in the previous 40 years. More importantly, Bo has come out on the left hand side in .713 percent of his conference games, whereas UW succeeded in merely .357 percent of Big Ten games with the eight coaches who preceded Ryan.

Ryan isn’t great because he wins championships and competes in the NCAA Tournament every year.

Ryan is awesome because he wins championships and competes in the NCAA Tournament every year at WISCONSIN. All caps and italics necessary.

Wisconsin basketball was the last drops of foam in a Keystone barrel before Ryan took over. The Badgers were Hufflepuff without Cedric Diggory. The program was so bad it defies apt metaphors.

The transformation of Wisconsin basketball from Big Ten doormat to consistent winner qualifies Ryan for coach of the decade nomination. As for those who argue Ryan just capitalized on what Dick Bennett started with his Final Four run they are partially right, but Bennett retired with a 39-45 record in conference play, and the Final Four team was an eight seed, so he wasn’t exactly handing off a team destined to win a Big Ten championship.

But many shortsighted Badger fans remain lukewarm with Ryan. Sure he wins in the regular season, I have heard (from Associate Sports Editor Max Henson and former Sports Editor Derek Zetlin), but his NCAA Tournament record remains spotty, most notably over the past five years, with an average second-round loss including three losses to worse seeds. In an exasperated and, I’m sure, arrogant way, I would respond that Bo can do whatever he wants in the NCAA Tournament — and with only one first round exit and making it to the second weekend three times, he has only been average, not horrible. Badger basketball was beyond bad before Ryan got here; the remarkable overhaul of the program gives him carte blanche in the postseason.

I was happy to get a 90 percent on the test after four decades of red F’s stamped on nearly every season. Sure, we might not compete for national championships, but consistently good is better than boom or bust.

At least that is what I thought until Butler came within one inch of a national championship.

I figured the only way to compete to win the Final Four and not just get there was with NBA athletes — players Ryan attracts with much less frequency than the big name programs. Be it Ryan’s stubbornly playing by the recruiting rules (the anti-John Calipari) or refusing to massage an AAU baby’s ego with promises and ass kissing, the NBA players that came to Bo weren’t thought of as future pros until Ryan was done developing them.

But following the blueprint Butler has laid down, future millionaires might not be necessary for postseason victory.

So what exactly does a team of future Euro-league stars have to do to top soon-to-be late first-round picks?

First, play defense. And not good defense, not great defense, but holy-mother-look-how-they-rotate-as-one-defense. The Bulldogs finished the year ranked No. 5 in Ken Pomeroy’s defensive efficiency ratings. UW finished No. 19, which is very good, but not good enough to slow the onslaught Cornell bitch-slapped them with. The most recent Wisconsin Final Four team made it that far based solely on defense. Protecting the hoop has never been considered a weakness for the Badgers, but it did abandon them at the most critical time this year.

Second, three offensive weapons are needed. The championship game proved to be the ultimate example of this. Jon Scheyer, Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith proved to be a bit better than Gordon Hayward, Shelvin Mack and Matt Howard, but both teams’ core three carried them through the first five games. For much of the year, only two scorers were clicking at a time for UW — with Jason Bohannon heating up in Jon Leuer’s absence, but Trevon Hughes cooling down during Leuer’s return — and a third threat must be found to complement Leuer and Jordan Taylor next season.

Finally, winning is contagious. Butler’s ability to pull out close games in March probably had something to do with the 20 straight wins leading up to the tournament. While a perfect season in the Big Ten is an unreasonable expectation, two losses to Illinois and an ugly defeat at Minnesota shouldn’t be shrugged off as “bad shooting nights.” Dropping games you should win matters.

So what does this all mean? Well, it still doesn’t discount what Ryan has been able to do. If Bo never makes it to the Final Four, he still will be the first-, second- and fourth-best coach in Wisconsin history.

Essentially he will be the Badger version of Gene Keady, not a bad position to be in.

But Butler proved it is reasonable to want more than this. Bo doesn’t need to send exclamation point-filled text messages to recruits like Blue to compete for a national championship, he just needs Leuer, Keaton Nankivil, Taylor and the rest to defend like they would if Tim Maymon approached their mother.

Getting an AB in class should still be satisfying, but following 15-year-old-looking whiz kid Brad Steven’s footsteps could lead to that elusive 100 percent.

As my parents and girlfriend can attest too, admitting I was wrong about anything, especially in basketball, is a rare occurrence. As a fairly stubborn man himself, perhaps Bo can seek help for his postseason foibles and push Wisconsin the final step of his impossible journey.

As Butler showed us, being content with consistently good isn’t quite good enough.

Michael is a senior majoring in journalism. Where else has he been wrong in life? Tell him at [email protected].