Every year, it happens. The experienced players, the captains who might have even become the face of a team, must always leave.

So goes the college game.

But with every year, the young and promising grow one year older and capably take over the reigns of their squad.

So as Jason Bohannon and Trevon Hughes depart, the likes of Keaton Nankivil, Jon Leuer and Jordan Taylor are set to steer the latest edition of Wisconsin men’s basketball under head coach Bo Ryan.

Ryan welcomes back three starters following a fourth-place finish in the Big Ten and a second-round exit from the NCAA tournament a year ago. All three are in the frontcourt, led by 6-foot-10 Leuer, a preseason All-Big Ten selection.

“I think we have a really good frontline,” Leuer said at the UW basketball media day. “With the guys returning and with some of the younger guys, we definitely feel like it’s going to be one of our strengths this year.”

Although Nankivil and Leuer will return to their starting roles at forward, as many as five others will battle for playing time at the No. 3 and 4 spots on the court, while redshirt senior J.P. Gavinski, redshirt sophomore Jared Berggren and freshman Evan Anderson will compete for time at center.

Anderson, a 6-foot-10 native of Stanley, Wis. who has impressed Ryan thus far, is still considering redshirting his first year at UW and remains eligible to do so after playing in the exhibition games prior to the Nov. 14 season opener versus Prairie View A&M.

But despite the fact that the exhibition and regular seasons have yet to arrive, the No. 24 Badgers have already benefited from a healthy amount of competition in practice with the multitude of bigs looking to increase their impact from last year and several guards eager to succeed in the backcourt.

“The big thing with that is it makes practice very intense,” sophomore forward Mike Bruesewitz said. “Everybody’s pretty banged up, but that’s because we got six, seven, eight, nine guys playing for those front court positions and trying to get minutes.”

Leuer, meanwhile, returns from a livelier offseason than most after spending time on the practice squad for Team USA’s FIBA World Championship team. The Badgers’ leading returning scorer, who missed nine games last year to a fractured wrist, didn’t let the opportunity of playing with some of the best players in college and the NBA go to waste.

“Jon went in there with the idea that he knew he was going to try and help those guys get better, and he did… and [the coaches] just loved him for that,” Ryan said. “He contributed but also learned, so I think that’s a heck of a combination.”

In the backcourt, Taylor – who started 17 games last season as a sophomore and averaged 10 points and 3.6 assists per game – will most likely grab the starting position at point guard, although Ryan has stated he has made no decision about either guard spot.

“We’re still looking,” Ryan said. “We’re all eyes and ears right now and watching and observing who’s developed in the offseason.”

The Badgers’ options at shooting guard remain scant in terms of prior experience, although the arms of freshmen Josh Gasser and Ben Brust are said to be developing nicely. Rob Wilson, a junior who has split time at forward and shooting guard in the past, is also an option.

Once the season begins, though, Wisconsin’s focus will shift from the makeup of its roster to the makeup of this season’s schedule. After two exhibitions, the quest for the tenth consecutive NCAA tournament appearance under Ryan and the twelfth straight for the program kicks off.

“It’s fun,” Taylor said of UW’s consistent success. “You almost take it for granted. My freshman year, we almost had a scare and didn’t get in. I remember coming in and you just expect to get to the tournament and, that’s part of the rankings thing.”

After two games in Madison, the Badgers will head to the desert to face a rapidly improving UNLV squad Nov. 20. Last year’s Runnin’ Rebels returned to the NCAA tournament for just the fourth time in a decade, where they fell to Northern Iowa on a 3-pointer with less than three seconds remaining. That matchup will provide a solid early test for UW, as the Badgers appearance in the coaches’ poll was largely perceived as a pleasant surprise – but not by Ryan’s squad.

“No, we never feel like we’re a surprise team,” Leuer said. “We have high expectations every year. One of our goals every year is to win the Big Ten. We fell short of that, just by a game, last year.

Five days later, Wisconsin will head to Orlando for the Old Space Classic with the opening game against Manhattan. Then, UW will return home to kickstart a three-game span of intra-state rivalries. UW-Milwaukee will come to the Kohl Center Dec. 8, and three days later, the Badgers will travel to Milwaukee to face Marquette at the Bradley Center. After a day off, Wisconsin will return to Madison to host UW-Green Bay. Last year, the Phoenix gave the Badgers their second loss of the season in an 88-84 overtime upset.

“I’ve always tweaked every year, whether or not we’re doing a little more of this, a little more ball screening action, a little more staggered action offensively,” Ryan said. “And then defensively we did things – who are our better block out guys, who are our better footwork guys on stop-and-dribble penetration, and if you have weaknesses we’re trying to work on the weaknesses. Nothing’s changed. Nobody’s assured of anything at this point.”

After beginning Big Ten play Dec. 28 against Minnesota, the Badgers will face No. 16 Illinois Jan. 2. After a trip back home to face Michigan, Wisconsin will head to East Lansing Jan. 11 for the first big game of the season against No. 2 Michigan State.

“Every year, whether you win a national championship or the Big Ten title or whatever it is, you have motivation to get better because we’re all students of the game, we’re all trying to improve,” Taylor said.

The first showdown with No. 8 Purdue then comes Feb. 1. The Boilermakers will be without star forward Robbie Hummel for the season, but still have preseason All-Big Ten members JaJuan Johnson and E’Twaun Moore. After that, the Badgers get the Spartans at home Feb. 6 and then travel to Iowa and host No. 5 Ohio State before heading to Purdue on Feb. 16.

The final stretch for Wisconsin at least appears manageable, as Penn State, Michigan, Northwestern, Indiana and Ohio State make up the Badgers’ last five opponents.

Yet, before the Badgers begin to look ahead in their effort to build on last year’s fourth place Big Ten finish, that one-game-at-a-time approach pervading UW athletics will remind Ryan’s squad of their task – simply competing.

“Everybody on our team loves to play basketball, loves to compete,” Taylor said. “There’s blood in practice, there’s guys injured. They’re getting hurt but coming right back in, so we’re all competitors. We just go at it, and we love playing against each other. That’s what makes it fun to play.”