Perfect temperatures (inside) and tailgating: Wisconsin coaches, Brewers are hyped for basketball at American Family Field
University of Wisconsin men's basketball coach Greg Gard is getting to live his dream by playing at the stadium of his favorite Major League Baseball team.
Gard was an outfielder at UW-Platteville — "for a very short window" he's quick to point out — but he won't be taking the field for the Milwaukee Brewers. Instead, he will lead the Badgers in the first men's college basketball game at American Family Field on Nov. 11 against Stanford. That has also been a big goal for the 51-year-old guy who grew up rooting for the hard-charging Brewers teams of the early 1980s.
"This goes back at least 15 years," Gard said Monday at a news conference at the stadium. "Maybe further. When I was assistant (under Bo Ryan) doing the scheduling.
"This stadium was just being built by the time we got to Madison. When it was first built, there was no heat in the inner part of the ballpark."
American Family Field was built in 2001, but the facility has branched out from baseball in recent years. There have been soccer matches, a bowling tournament and, just recently, a hard-rocking concert of hair-metal bands.
"The people of Wisconsin paid for this ballpark," Brewers president of business operations Rick Schlesinger said. "And, while it's designed for baseball, it's really a park for the people to have all these events."
But how will the stadium work for a hoops doubleheader, with the UW women's team facing Kansas State before the men's game?
'Perfect conditions for basketball'
Tickets go on sale on Tuesday and the unique set-up is sure to draw a rollicking crowd, with fans in bleachers on the field in addition to the Brewers' regular seating. With an early November date, it's also fair to wonder about the actual atmosphere of the game.
"The good news is we have a really good heating system," Schlesinger said. "Well-maintained. So we'll have no problems keeping the temperature at anywhere between 68 and 70 (degrees). Whatever the coaches prefer. Maybe the locker rooms for the visiting players will be a different temperature, but we can talk about that.
"I'm very comfortable and confident that regardless of whether it's snowing, sleeting, hailing, whatever we do in November in Milwaukee, that it will be very temperate and perfect conditions for basketball."
UW women's coach Marisa Moseley hopes her players will be ready for radically different sight-lines than what they are accustomed to in Madison.
"The Kohl Center is a large environment as well," Moseley said. "Seventeen thousand people and the way people are kind of set back on the end zones. So it's not where you come into these other arenas and it's a lot more intimate with their feel. I'm not saying this is exactly the same, but I think you get a little bit of that feel.
"I also think just depending on what our attendance is, the sheer number of folks that you're going to be playing in front of, we got some kids that like to come on (a big stage) and those people will, like, it's go-time. There might be some that are a little deer-in-headlights."
Gard expects a quick adjustment.
"The rims are still 10 feet high," he said. "The court's 94 feet long. We just go play."
National spotlight and also some tailgating
The college basketball "Game of the Century" in 1968 between UCLA and Houston at the Astrodome was invoked several times during the news conference. While the doubleheader won't quite have the star power of Lew Alcindor vs. Elvin Hayes, the games will draw more hype than typical early-season nonconference matchups.
"I think it's great," Gard said. "Not only from TV coverage that will be national, but I think just the experience that fans will have in here will just be phenomenal.
"Just looking around here today and kind of envisioning it. I've had this vision for 15-plus years, but now knowing that it's coming to reality. It's going to be an awesome experience."
For Moseley, who will be in her second season at UW, it is also important to generate more attention for her program and also get more face recognition.
"One of the pillars for me just as a coach is to make sure I have a connection to the community," Moseley said. "We're not necessarily right here in Milwaukee, but an hour and 15 minutes away.
"There's obviously huge recognition in this state for the Badgers and for folks to understand that it's a new dawn of women's basketball, that we're building something special and they're going to want to get on board with."
And the games also give basketball fans across the state a rare chance to tailgate in an expansive parking lot.
"Rain or shine, tailgating," Schlesinger said. "And knowing our fans, the weather is sort of an irrelevancy to that.
"We're going to try to create the Badger experience inside and the Brewers experience outside."
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin coaches set for basketball at Brewers' American Family Field
