http://www.si.com/college-basketball/2017/02/09/ethan-happ-wisconsin-badgers-player-year-big-ten
The Ethan-vention: Happ's rise to stardom at Wisconsin
MADISON, Wis. — In the unofficial annals of Wisconsin basketball, it is known as The Ethan-vention. A wiry freshman from a small town and a high school of about 400 students was having difficulty adjusting to a more demanding existence, competing against future first-round picks that had reached a Final Four only a few months earlier. So if Ethan Happ got fouled during open gyms in that summer of 2014, he looked for calls and received blank stares. If his 175-pound frame took a hard bump on a screen, he pouted. If he had a shot blocked, he might not hoist another. If he got dunked on, he’d all but surrender on every possession that followed. “Ethan,” says forward Vitto Brown, “was one of the softest guys we’d ever met.”
The Badgers didn’t need their lone newcomer to key a championship push then. They needed him to stop being annoying. So Brown summoned his fellow sophomores to the apartment he shared with Happ. At some point, they told their young teammate, the stars on the roster would leave and Happ would have to contribute. To do so, Happ had to start behaving their way. “The less flowery version of it was ‘Man up,’ basically,” says forward Nigel Hayes, one of the attendees. No one made Happ admit his problem. They just browbeat it out of him.
*****
It’s also uncommon to grow three inches during college, as he has since those turbulent early days with the team that currently can’t live without him. Happ notes he was actually a 5' 9" eighth-grade guard that sprouted into a giant. If some irritated teammates had this info on a long-ago summer day, they might have realized there’s a simple strategy with Wisconsin’s burgeoning star: Just wait, and the growth spurt will come.
*****
To explain how Ethan Happ acquired this set of skills, Milan is indeed the place to start. Every Christmas, a competitive, athletic family gathered—Ethan counts Blue Jays pitcher J.A. Happ and former Northwestern tight end Mark Szott as cousins—and driveway pickup games played in holiday sweaters soldered his killer instinct. (Ethan recalls catching elbows to the gut from smaller relatives.)
*****
There was nothing favorable about Ethan Happ’s chances during his first year in Madison. The Badgers were coming off a Final Four season and were led by Frank Kaminsky, a senior 7-footer and national player of the year favorite. The outward expressions of frustration may have irked Happ’s peers, but he had good reason to be irked. He was getting his butt kicked daily. “I had no post moves,” Happ says, “and the first three months, I would just get blocked or Frank would score on me every single time.”
- 1. Seems like Happ really needed that RS year.
2. The parallels btwn Kaminsky and Happ are pretty striking - both being guards/perimeter players until a late growth spurt, grew up in Ilinois and have NU connections and both ending up in Madison.
The Ethan-vention: Happ's rise to stardom at Wisconsin
MADISON, Wis. — In the unofficial annals of Wisconsin basketball, it is known as The Ethan-vention. A wiry freshman from a small town and a high school of about 400 students was having difficulty adjusting to a more demanding existence, competing against future first-round picks that had reached a Final Four only a few months earlier. So if Ethan Happ got fouled during open gyms in that summer of 2014, he looked for calls and received blank stares. If his 175-pound frame took a hard bump on a screen, he pouted. If he had a shot blocked, he might not hoist another. If he got dunked on, he’d all but surrender on every possession that followed. “Ethan,” says forward Vitto Brown, “was one of the softest guys we’d ever met.”
The Badgers didn’t need their lone newcomer to key a championship push then. They needed him to stop being annoying. So Brown summoned his fellow sophomores to the apartment he shared with Happ. At some point, they told their young teammate, the stars on the roster would leave and Happ would have to contribute. To do so, Happ had to start behaving their way. “The less flowery version of it was ‘Man up,’ basically,” says forward Nigel Hayes, one of the attendees. No one made Happ admit his problem. They just browbeat it out of him.
*****
It’s also uncommon to grow three inches during college, as he has since those turbulent early days with the team that currently can’t live without him. Happ notes he was actually a 5' 9" eighth-grade guard that sprouted into a giant. If some irritated teammates had this info on a long-ago summer day, they might have realized there’s a simple strategy with Wisconsin’s burgeoning star: Just wait, and the growth spurt will come.
*****
To explain how Ethan Happ acquired this set of skills, Milan is indeed the place to start. Every Christmas, a competitive, athletic family gathered—Ethan counts Blue Jays pitcher J.A. Happ and former Northwestern tight end Mark Szott as cousins—and driveway pickup games played in holiday sweaters soldered his killer instinct. (Ethan recalls catching elbows to the gut from smaller relatives.)
*****
There was nothing favorable about Ethan Happ’s chances during his first year in Madison. The Badgers were coming off a Final Four season and were led by Frank Kaminsky, a senior 7-footer and national player of the year favorite. The outward expressions of frustration may have irked Happ’s peers, but he had good reason to be irked. He was getting his butt kicked daily. “I had no post moves,” Happ says, “and the first three months, I would just get blocked or Frank would score on me every single time.”
- 1. Seems like Happ really needed that RS year.
2. The parallels btwn Kaminsky and Happ are pretty striking - both being guards/perimeter players until a late growth spurt, grew up in Ilinois and have NU connections and both ending up in Madison.
