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36 // VARSITY March 20, 2014 Later, he conceded the Canada experience went into building this team's foundation. "No question, it put us ahead," he said. "It helped us in those non-conference games ― other than Green Bay, Marquette and Milwaukee ― because usually the teams you're playing don't see you." The Badgers set a school record with a 16-game winning streak to open the season. But like every- body else, save Wichita State, they hit a rough stretch and lost five of six in the Big Ten. "The way I do the video, the way I do the teach- ing clips," Ryan said, "whether we've been on the left (win) or right hand side (loss), we're still going over things that we either did real well …" Prompting him to say, "Look we need to do more of this …." Or, in the next breath, he added, "We're going over things that we're not doing well and we're saying, 'Hey, we have to change this behavior."' Ryan is a constant. "I don't change," he stressed. "What they learn is up to them." After that 1-5 stretch, the Badgers won eight straight. How did he fix it? How did they fix it? "They did what they were supposed to do," he said. "They kept working at it. There isn't like a button and something changes from one game to the next (by pushing that button). "It doesn't work that way in athletics, not in team sports. It's such a combination of things. It's not one thing, it never is." You could hear his dad saying the same things. Butch Ryan passed away in August. He was 89. "Yeah, at times, you hear certain things that remind me of him," said Ryan when asked how often he has thought about Butch during the season. Mostly, he will catch himself or others saying, "As I was always taught…" Butch Ryan was a teacher, too. "So when people ask, 'How far do you want this team to go? Or, do you think about a championship,"' Bo Ryan said, "I explain to them if you're not thinking about that, it breaks the code." The code? "It's fun to want," he said. Want? Like, it's fun to desire something? "The code is that it's fun to want," he reiterated. "You can want a lot of things. That's what keeps us going." What does he want from this team? "I want these guys to play to their potential and take it as far as they can," he said. "I'm the facilita- tor. That's what I do. I try to get them to understand that's all you can do. "And, then, they take the test ― every 40 minutes is a test." Are there any more wants? Is he wanting for any- thing else? "No, I got into this profession to teach and I want to see what they've learned," he said. "When you play, you get to show what you've learned. DAVID STLUKA "Yeah, at times, you hear certain things that remind me of him," said Ryan when asked how often he has thought about Butch during the season.