Rick Byrd and Bo Ryan have a great deal in common.
The extremely successful, veteran coaches of the Belmont and the University of Wisconsin men's basketball teams, respectively, got their first head coaching gigs at small schools and have won hundreds of games by believing in team basketball, motion offense and man-to-man defense.
"And not nearly as much one-on-one basketball that we see an awful lot of these days," added Byrd, who is in his 25th season at Belmont, a former NAIA school with an enrollment of less than 6,000 students.
They have celebrities as friends who are close to the team, too. Ryan, who won four NCAA Division III titles at UW-Platteville, is tight with two-time U.S. Open champ Andy North. Byrd's good friend is country music star Vince Gill.
Just don't think they believe they have something over Kentucky and its biggest fan, Ashley Judd. "I kind of like Ashley Judd myself but you better let other people decide that. She's way cuter than Vince," Byrd joked.
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Conversely, Ryan's and Byrd's teams, which will meet in a second-round NCAA tournament Southeast Regional game Thursday night in Tucson, Ariz., don't share much in common.
The Badgers (23-8), who are the No. 4 seed, prefer to play a half-court game and lead the nation in fewest turnovers. Belmont (30-4), which is the No. 13 seed, goes 11 deep, averages 80.4 points per game, presses all over the place and is second in the nation in forced turnovers at 19.2 per game.
"So that's a glaring difference," said Byrd, who is in his 25th season.
The Bruins also foul a bunch, which doesn't work well with a UW team that leads the nation in free-throw shooting percentage. "I might need to mention that to my team, don't you think?" Byrd added.
Whatever you do, don't think Belmont doesn't have a chance to beat UW. The Atlantic Sun Conference and tournament champions played twice at Tennessee due to a schedule glitch and nearly won both games.
In the first meeting, the Bruins missed a 3-pointer to tie the game with 30 seconds left and ended up losing 85-76. They got beat 66-65 in the second contest on a basket with 4 seconds left.
They also led on the road at halftime against Vanderbilt, another NCAA tournament team, before losing by nine points.
"I hope that will help us get some confidence," said Byrd, who led Belmont to consecutive berths in the NAIA Final Four in 1995 and 1996 before the program elevated to NCAA Division I status the following year. "I don't think our guys will be feeling, 'Do we belong?' "
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There's no chance that will happen. Belmont might be 0-3 all-time in NCAA tournament games but it took Duke to the wire before losing 71-70 in a first-round game two years ago.
The Bruins, who have won 12 in a row, will attempt to wear down the Badgers with a rotation in which no player is on the court more than 24.6 minutes per game. UW generally plays seven or eight players but may be without sophomore reserve forward Mike Bruesewitz, who has a sprained right knee.
The Bruins are led by sophomore guard Ian Clark, an all-conference and all-tournament selection who averages 12.4 points and makes 49 percent of his shots overall, as well as 46.3 percent from 3-point range.
Mick Hedgepeth, a 6-9 junior forward who was the Atlantic Sun tourney MVP, is their best inside threat. And senior guard Jordan Campbell brings veteran leadership and another outside shooting threat.
But they have eight more players like them. "That changes everything when you can ask them to play hard every second they are out there," Byrd said. "It's hard to do that when you're playing 35-plus minutes, I think."
The 57-year-old Byrd, who has 610 career victories, didn't know much about the Badgers when the pairings were announced but he knew all about Ryan, who has 623 career victories.
He knew they both have found success with programs that aren't built like the powerhouses. Belmont is a small school with about 6,000 students that draws students to its music business and entertainment major. Country music stars Brad Paisley and Trisha Yearwood are among its famous alums.
Like UW, it's a strong academic school. Byrd said Belmont has had more NCAA Academic All-Americans over the past 10 years than any other Division I school and has had a team grade-point average of at least 3.0 for 11 straight years.
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"We've chosen to embrace the fact that it's a good school academically instead of trying to work our way around it," Byrd said.
-- Copyright (c) 2011, The Wisconsin State Journal/Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
