'The opportunity to play in the Big Dance is everything': UWGB women, Kevin Borseth savor return to March Madness

GREEN BAY – Kevin Borseth was a bit emotional before, during and after the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay women’s showdown against Cleveland State in the Horizon League title game last week.

UWGB’s hall of fame basketball coach couldn’t help but shed a few tears, especially after the Phoenix’s victory over the Vikings clinched an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2018.

“You know, the last couple years we have been turned back,” said Borseth, whose team will play Tennessee at 11 a.m. Saturday in their opening game in Raleigh, North Carolina. “You don’t realize, sometimes you take things for granted. I think the first 20 years we were in every year and then to have that denied so many years and get an opportunity for these kids to come back and make something happen, I’m just so happy for them.

“They put so much time in. I think for every mid-major, the opportunity to play in the Big Dance is everything. It almost feels like if you don’t get in it, the year is not a success. Fortunately for us, we were able to come out on the top of that. It’s fun to see the kids celebrate.”

Borseth is right.

When it comes to the UWGB women’s program, six years is an eternity to not play in the NCAAs.

Since moving to Division I in 1987 and making the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 1994, the team never had gone more than four years without playing on the big stage.

It had become almost an annual event for UWGB to go dancing. That tends to happen when a team is the class of a conference, not just for years, but decades.

During a 20-year stretch from 1998 to 2018, the Phoenix played in the NCAA Tournament 16 times and never went more than one season without qualifying.

The Horizon League, and women’s basketball in general, is on a whole different level than it was at the turn of the century.

Even a consistently successful team like UWGB no longer wins Horizon regular-season championships the way it did when it captured a record 20 straight from 1999 to 2018.

The Phoenix has finished at least eight games above .500 each of the last six seasons and has won 22 or more games in half of those, but it has finished first in the league just one time during that span as other teams like CSU emerged.

There was a time when every UWGB player experienced the opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament before they graduated, but that hasn’t been the case in the recent past.

Former Seymour star Hailey Oskey played parts of five seasons and scored 925 points for the Phoenix and never got there.

Former Appleton North standout Sydney Levy played two seasons at UW-Milwaukee and her final three at UWGB. She scored more than 1,100 points but was shut out.

Even a player like junior guard and Luxemburg-Casco product Cassie Schiltz was starting to run out of chances to break through, even with an extra year of eligibility granted to student-athletes by the NCAA in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Schiltz came to UWGB to play in the NCAA Tournament, and she and the rest of her veteran teammates finally get the opportunity.

So, yeah, that’s why Borseth was so emotional.

“I mean, we have been trying to get where we are today for years,” Schiltz said. “To fight with this group every day and to finally get here with Coach, I have been with him for five years. To finally get here, it has been a dream of mine. It’s awesome.”

UWGB received a No. 11 seed and goes up against a No. 6 Tennessee team that is the only program to make every NCAA Tournament since it started in 1982.

The teams have met two previous times, with the Volunteers winning 59-53 in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament in 2016 and 71-36 in 1996 in a game played in Knoxville.

Tennessee has lost only twice in the opening round of the NCAAs, which means the UWGB women making their first appearance have some work to do.

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Which is fine with them.

The Phoenix has shown it can beat big-time teams this season, with two wins over squads in The Associated Press Top 25 at the time.

“Absolutely,” sophomore forward-center Jenna Guyer said. “I think we have proven to the country and ourselves that we can beat any team. That’s just exciting to get another opportunity to do so.”

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: UWGB women's basketball, Kevin Borseth savor return to March Madness