Former Wisconsin Badgers star and Naismith Player of the Year Frank Kaminsky didn’t love his alma mater’s draw in the NCAA Tournament, saying he believes the committee has been doing UW a disservice for years.
He’s not the only one who’s frustrated to see the fifth-seeded Badgers head out west for a battle with 12th seeded High Point, a 30-win team, before possibly facing SEC champion Arkansas in the second round.
The games will be played in Portland, Oregon, with an early tip time March 19 that will arrive before 11 a.m. local time on the first day of the tournament.
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“Funny how everyone knows the selection committee actively dislikes Wisconsin yet nothing is ever done about it,” Kaminsky wrote on X.
He’s not the only one who frowned upon the assignment, or even expected it.
There’s some recent history to explains some ire from. In 2025, the Badgers went to Denver to play four days after competing in the Big Ten Tournament title game with one of the earliest tip times in the tournament, also before noon locally.
UW had a three-seed last year and narrowly missed an assignment in its backyard at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, instead traveling to a location perceptively more geographically favorable for first-round foe Montana and second-round opponent BYU.
BYU wound up downing Wisconsin in the second round, 91-89.
One year before that, the fifth-seeded Badgers were a trendy upset pick when they were sent to Brooklyn to face 12th-seeded James Madison, and that projection came to pass in the lopsided 72-61 loss. Again, the location was a markedly shorter journey for the higher-seeded team.
Wisconsin was also sent out West to San Jose in 2019 as a fifth seed to face No. 12 Oregon, another matchup that geographically favored the opponent. But Wisconsin did get to play in Milwaukee in 2022.
Among this year’s first-weekend venues, only St. Louis provides an option within a six-hour drive of Madison, and any assignment would have been a hike.
And while High Point has a gaudy record, the program also hasn’t faced any top-flight competition this year, and it will be traveling farther from North Carolina.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Did Wisconsin get bad NCAA draw? Frank Kaminsky, others think so
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