Beta Theta Pi - University of Wisconsin

4 BETA THETA PI T he Badgers' 2015 Final Four victory over Kentucky is widely regarded as the greatest game in Wisconsin basketball history. e team, led by Player of the Year Frank Kaminsky, defeated an undefeated University of Kentucky team. Seven of UK's players would go on to play in the NBA, versus just two for UW. Many have forgotten what is remembered as the Badgers' greatest hoops victory before this, and that's a pity, because the Betas, led by Brother Ken Siebel '63, were a major part of that win, contributing two other starters, Mike O'Melia '64 and Tom Hughbanks '62. We also contributed David Grams '64 and Arne Quarana '64 to what Pathe Newscasts refers to as "e Cinderella Team." March 3, 1962, was a snowy aernoon in Madison, but despite the inclement weather, a crowd of 13,545 fans packed the Field House to see third-year coach John Erickson's (Beloit '49) team take on a No. 1 ranked Ohio State team, undefeated in the last 47 regular season games. e Badgers' 86-67 victory made this game "the year's greatest upset." OSU's team featured four members who would end up in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame: coach Fred Taylor, Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, and a sixth man named Bobby Knight, who would go on to win three NCAA Championships as the head coach of Indiana. In 1997, for perspective, Lucas and Havlicek were named among the 50 greatest NBA players of all time. Lucas appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a student and was spoken of then as one of the best collegians ever. UW had a good team but then, as now, had no real superstars. During the regular season they'd beaten No. 3 ranked Dayton and No. 4 Providence, but had lost badly, twice, to No. 2 Cincinnati. "In those days there was very little scouting, or film," notes Siebel. "We would just go out and try to play our game. We clearly overachieved that night!" Ken Siebel grew up in Rock Falls, Illinois, where he starred at their high school. "Both my parents were factory workers," he told me recently. "When I was 9 years old my mother sat me down and said, 'On Monday I start at the factory, they're paying me $26 a week, and I'm The Second Greatest Hoops Game in Badger History going to save $25 of it every week so you can go to college.' My mom had grown up during the depression and had always wanted to go to college, but didn't have the money," Siebel recalls. OSU went into the game riding a 27-game winning streak. Wisconsin's strategy was to play them in a man-to-man defense that shut down their outside shooters, and to run fast breaks on every offensive play; it worked! Siebel held Havilcek to nine points on 3 for 15 shot attempts, while his team shot an anemic 24 for 75 (32%) to UW's 39 for 77 (51%). Don Hearndon shot a career best 29 points for UW, with Siebel next at 22. Coach Fred Taylor pulled his two All Americans, Lucas and Havlick, with a minute to play and the game decided, to a standing ovation from the Badger faithful. "Instead of going to their bench, they came to our bench and stuck out their hands to me and they shook my hand and they said, 'Coach, you deserve to win, your team played a great game,'" Coach John Erickson noted in the next day's Wisconsin State Journal. e absolutely euphoric crowd carried two Betas, Siebel and O'Melia, off the floor: a moment captured in a front-page photo in the State Journal. O'Melia would display that photo in his office until his dying day. Coach Erickson put the game ball in the Field House trophy case and noted aer the game, "is is the greatest thing in my life, other than my wife and baby." "Havlicek was very nice about me guarding him in an interview years later," Siebel notes. "He was an amazing guy!" e Badgers would finish 17-7 for the year and 10-4 in the Big Ten for second place in the conference. If you've forgotten how they did in the NCAA tournament that year, it's because they didn't go. "In those days, only conference champions got to play in the tournament," Siebel explains. "Today, we'd be a three or four seed." Ken Siebel would end up as Wisconsin's MVP in 1961, '62 and '63. He was draed in the sixth round of the NBA dra by the then Baltimore Wizards, but turned them down. "Back then, starting pay for rookies was $12,000-$15,000," Siebel recalls. "All the travel was by bus, and I figured if I was going to be seventh man on the team I'd sign. Aer trying out, they made me an offer, but I realized I'd be eighth man at best, so I declined and went back to earn my MBA from UW instead." e thing about that team was that they all did exceptionally well aer graduation. Siebel has had an extremely successful career in finance and investment research; Mike O'Melia became a superior court judge in Arizona; Tom Hughbanks was Phi Beta Kappa and had a long career at Johnson's Wax; Lonnie Ostrum earned his Ph.D.; and even their sixth man, Pat Richter, found fame as a statue in front of the Kohl Center. As our former athletic director, Pat is widely credited with the rebirth of UW's sports programs. "I loved the Beta house," Siebel told me recently. "We had such a great group of guys there, and other than sports it was the best part of my college career." One thing Ken failed to note was that his second daughter, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, was an athlete too, playing soccer at Stanford University, where she went on to earn her MBA (daughters Brooke and Jessica played tennis at Duke and Princeton). If her name sounds familiar, it could be because of her award- winning film documentaries, or it could because she's also California's First Lady. John Hofmann '65 summed up the day to me pretty well recently: "Boy, was there ever a celebration at the house that night!" Damn glad. — Written by Rod Taylor, #1448, UW 1972 Ken Siebel '63, Beta brother and Badger hoops legend.

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