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Brad Soderberg is planning on coaching his son's sixth-grade basketball practice Friday night, but he can't make the game Saturday morning. Wisconsin's got a game against Xavier and he'll be the head coach.
"But I've got a good assistant who knows what I want to do,"
Soderberg said. "He should be able to handle it."
Sound familiar?
|  | | Brad Soderberg knows the Wisconsin system of basketball. |
Soderberg, 38, was that same assistant to Dick Bennett, and is now taking over the Badgers on an interim basis after his former coach and longtime mentor abruptly retired Thursday in Madison.
Bennett stepped away because he felt he couldn't handle the mental and physical anguish that he goes through after every pass, screen and shot. Soderberg doesn't feel the pain of every miscue as much as Bennett, but he knows his structured offense and disciplined, man-to-man defense as well as anyone in the country.
Soderberg played under Bennett at Wisconsin-Stevens Point, sharing
the 1983-84 Division III runner-up backcourt with Terry Porter. Soderberg was a
walk-on, who worked hard and earned a starting position.
When he was done playing, Soderberg didn't fall into any big-time coaching jobs. Instead, he went the back roads, similar to Bennett, who trekked through the corners of
Wisconsin in high schools and small college before settling in at the state's main
campus six years ago. Soderberg went to Dubuque, Iowa, to coach at Loras
College from 1988-93 as the head coach. He spent the next two years at South
Dakota State before Bennett called him to join him in Madison when he got
the job.
Getting the head job at Wisconsin because Bennett retired isn't the
way he wanted it, but Soderberg is not going to tread lightly in the position.
Soderberg wants to be the full-time, permanent coach, but he's not feeling the pressure
of having to get back to the Final Four, let alone the NCAA Tournament, to
get the nod.
"If it works out that will be great," Soderberg said. "I'll be fine
with what happens. I'm a Division III athlete who had to earn a scholarship. I
spent years coaching in lower-profile places. No way did I think I would get
the job at my state school. If I don't, it won't be the end of the world. I
go back to coaching somewhere at another level."
Soderberg seems the perfect fit to replace Bennett at Wisconsin. His staff remains
intact, with assistant Shawn Hood and Bennett's son, Tony, staying on with
the team.
Soderberg also fits the profile of a Wisconsin coach. The only time the
Badgers went out of the Midwest, or for that matter went after a higher-profile coach
in the last 20 years, was when they replaced Steve Yoder with Stu Jackson.
Jackson coached better athletes, like Michael Finley and Rashard Griffith,
but he bolted for the NBA, leaving the job to assistant Stan Van Gundy for a
year the way Nixon left Ford with the presidency. The program wasn't in
trouble, but Van Gundy didn't have a legitimate claim on the job and never
had a chance.
When Bennett and Soderberg arrived a year later, they had to
completely overhaul the program. They got guards like Sean Mason and Ty
Calderwood to play to their style, but it wasn't until the present senior
class of Mike Kelley, Andy Kowske and Mark Vershaw arrived that the players truly
understood what Bennett wanted on the court.
The culmination of Bennett's rebuilding job came last year when a
team that was once 12-11 raced through the final few weeks and the NCAA
Tournament to a Final Four appearance, the first for the school since 1941. Bennett talked about retiring at the Final Four, but Soderberg said he thought Bennett was gone the third year on the job when it started to wear on him, and he stayed long after that.
Soderberg said he'll have to find that happy medium, where he's able
to motivate the Badgers without using Bennett's intensity.
Soderberg is more mild and isn't one to let his emotions get the best of him
and rip a player during a game or practice. But he has the respect of the
staff and the players. And he knows the system as well as, if not better than, Bennett.
That's the difference with Soderberg's chances to remove
the interim label than, say, Indiana's Mike Davis this season. Davis is in an
improbable situation and is trying to go from Bob Knight's motion offense to
a pro-style, free-flowing offense that will take time to develop with younger
and inexperienced players. Indiana has to have the patience with Davis to
see if it works.
The other major difference with Soderberg and the rest of these
coaches is the state of the program: It's not in turmoil.
The Badgers just beat Maryland and are coming off a Final Four run. Wisconsin has five
seniors on the roster and its best scorer and top small forward defender, Maurice Linton, and its top reserve at the point, Travon Davis, are back against Marquette on Dec. 23. The pair are serving eight-game suspensions for their role in Shoe Gate scandal over the summer, when they got a discount the NCAA found objectionable at a Madison-area shoe store.
But first, the Badgers play Xavier, the A-10's favorite, on Saturday and
still have games at Temple on Dec. 14, against South Florida on Dec. 30, not to mention the entire Big Ten season. Soderberg said he's not going to get caught up in
wins and losses, but he understands the expectations on the team.
"I'm not going to change anything," Soderberg said. "I'm not
sitting here trying to put in a new press or wrinkle. I'm preparing for
Xavier the same way we would. Our issue is still getting someone to put the
ball in the basket. We've got to play the same kind of tough defense. It's a
no-brainer to stay with what we're doing."
Do that and Soderberg should get the job permanently.
Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com.
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