Listen to Matt Lepay’s one-on-one conversation with host Jay Sorgi about a team which surprised the basketball world, a Wisconsin Badgers team which started the 2000 NCAA Tournament as an eight seed and ended it in the Final Four after three upset victories.
More: 2000 Badgers coach Dick Bennett on his Final Four team’s run
Lepay on an unforgettable moment of victory with the Badgers’ 2000 West Regional Final win over Purdue, and his call of it: “I can’t believe I’m gonna say it, but here it comes…THE WISCONSIN BADGERS ARE GOING TO THE FINAL FOUR!”
“There was disbelief.”
“I’m not one who writes down what I want to say. I’m not real thrilled with how I descried those last seconds, I guess, but it was surreal because the game was tense. There was a point in the second half where the foul count was getting lopsided. I thought, ‘OK, here we go. This is where Purdue might be able to pull away, get to the foul line a lot. It didn’t happen. Jon (Bryant) hit some big shots. There were other big plays made. I remember Wisconsin left the door open, missed some opportunities, missed some free throws late, but when they got to four points in the closing seconds, Purdue had missed a couple of shots…
“It was just an incredible thing to witness, the joy on the faces of the players, a couple jumping up on the media table courtside, and Dick Bennett is always someone who would agonize over a loss or anytime he didn’t think his team didn’t play all that well, but the joy on his face, his staff, everybody connected with the program and all the fans who were out there, it’s something I’ll never forget.”
