The transition to college is never an easy one. You move away from the comforts of home, maybe you get a roommate who gets on your nerves even more than your little brother, and you now have to deal with dorm foods that make you long for your mom’s overcooked lasagna.

Six incoming freshman to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have something a little extra on their shoulders. They have the weight of preparing to play for the returning Big Ten regular-season basketball champions, the Wisconsin Badgers. For true freshmen Boo Wade, Jason Chappell, John Emerson, Alando Tucker and Ray Nixon, this pressure is a reality.

The changeover for the incoming freshman recruits started right as their high school careers ended. Conditioning and preparing for the season started before the freshmen even arrived in Madison.

“College basketball is a year-round thing,” 6-foot-10 true freshman Jason Chappell said. “Over the summer you are together lifting and playing [with the team], then in preseason you are conditioning.”

Although the work takes up a lot of their summer schedule, it prepares them for an even busier schedule when they arrive in Madison. Along with all the homework and classes, the basketball players have had to deal with hours of running, lifting and scrimmaging.

“It’s challenging,” true freshman guard John Emerson said. “You just have to make a commitment to get through it.”

However, there is one conditioning drill in particular that the entire freshmen class agreed is nearly impossible to get through, “the hill.”

The hill lies in Elver Park, where the team’s task is to run up it, which is really not as simple as it sounds.

“It’s like a football field, but straight up,” 6-foot-8 freshman forward Ray Nixon explained. “It’s painful.”

Each two-minute cycle includes about 35 seconds of sprinting up the hill, and then the remaining time is left to prepare for the next cycle of sprints.

While about two hills would make the average person sick, and the third would knock them out for good, the team started with six consecutive hills. Now they’re up to 16 in a row. As much as the players hate them, they know they help.

“They get you in shape, they’re good,” Chappell said. “[You’ve] just got to get through them.”

Aside from the rigorous conditioning, the transitioning freshmen recruits have found college basketball to be a lot more physical and high-octane then high school basketball.

“The intensity level is just really high,” Nixon said. “Everything is fast-paced and physical.”

Junior Freddie Owens, who played in all 32 games for the Badgers last year, and had 14 double-digit scoring efforts last season, remembers how intense the transition seemed.

“Teams are faster and smarter,” Owens said. “From high school to college, or college to the pros, it’s going to get harder.”

However, the freshmen are not on their own with this tough change. Not only do they have each other to look to for support, but they can also look to each of the returning players, who have all been through the transition themselves.

Nixon has found a special rapport with sophomore forward Mike Wilkinson.

“Mike Wilkinson, he’s like my mentor,” Nixon said. “Whenever I have a question, I ask him. He was a red shirt his freshman year, so he knows the system.”

The UW basketball team will look even younger than it did a year ago. Five of its 10 scholarship players have never played in a college basketball game, so how the freshmen adapt to the collegiate level will be important to the team.

“It’s an important recruiting class; we knew that coming in,” head coach Bo Ryan said.

Coach Ryan hopes he can get some consistent production from the freshmen.

“[The freshmen] have showed some flashes,” coach Ryan said. “But I can only have the ones that show that tendency for consistency, not the guys who will play well every three games.”

Only two months into their college life, the freshmen have just started full practices, and as the season approaches, it will not get easier.

It will take some time until it is known how well the freshmen will adapt to their new surroundings.

Most see the light at the end of tunnel, and they are pumped for the start of the season and playing for the hyped Badger crowd.

“From what I heard from the players, there’s nothing like [playing at the Kohl Center,]” Chappell said. “I’m looking forward to it.”