Basketball all in the family

New women's basketball coach Kathi Bennett spent her early birthdays in musty, humid gymnasiums across scenic Wisconsin. \nIt was the best gift her father, Dick, ever gave her.\nGrowing up in what would be one of the country's best-known basketball families, Kathi learned her trade at the feet of her father, one of the best defensive coaches ever to teach the game, she said.\n"Some of my best memories growing up were in the gym," Bennett said. "Waiting for my dad after a game, running around the gym, hiding balls so I could shoot around.\n"Even at an early age, I'll never forget the interaction with his players."\nThings were a lot different back then. Dick Bennett wasn't known outside Eastern Wisconsin -- taking the Badgers to the Final Four was 30 years away. Tony, her brother, was a newborn -- his career with the NBA's Charlotte franchise was a far-off dream.\nAnd don\'t forget about her uncle, Jack Bennett, currently the men\'s coach at the University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point. Then, he was just a blip on the radar.\nEven before the Bennett name became synonymous with basketball on the national scope, the Bennett's were still a roundball family.\nDick spent 11 seasons coaching Wisconsin high school ball before he began his collegiate career. In those 11 years, he posted a 168-60 record culminating with Eau Claire Memorial\'s 22-3 record and second place finish in Wisconsin in his final year of prep basketball.\nFrom there he moved to NAIA school UW-Stevens Point, where he turned a sagging program into one of the division\'s strongest in his nine years there. Three straight trips to the NAIA tournament and national runner-up finish in 1984 solidified his move to UW-Green Bay.\nAt UWGB, Dick Bennett made a name for himself, taking a team that had lost over 40 games the two seasons prior to his entrance and making them a postseason force in five years. In all, Bennett made three NCAA tourney trips with the Phoenix, including an opening round win over Jason Kidd and California in 1994.\nHis success at UWGB earned him the UW job, where he took the Badgers to the Final Four last season, his fifth.\n"At every level that my dad went, I remember those games vividly and the struggles to get to that point," Bennett said. "There aren't a lot of kids that have those types of memories. And maybe we didn't sit home and have dinner together every single night. We had a different upbringing and it was just as special.\n"And I wouldn\'t trade that in for anything."\nBut the job that Dick has and the one Bennett ultimately pursued kept the two apart, each said. Like a knife that cuts both ways, the Bennett\'s have been brought together, but kept apart by the same game. \n"She talks to her mother a lot, and I get in on it second hand," Dick said. "We tried to get down and see her a couple weekends ago. We got outside of Bloomington to land, but it was such a bad storm that we had to turn around and come back."\nCarol Hammerle, Kathi's college coach at UWGB, said that Dick\'s absence sometimes didn\'t bother Kathi.\n"Because of Dick's schedule, he hasn\'t been able to be with her always," Hammerle said. "But I think she understood that. As a competitor herself, she appreciated what he was doing." \nKathi will travel with her team to Wisconsin for a Big Ten match-up with the Badgers, Sunday, Jan. 21. Placed near the middle of the conference schedule, the game will be important for the Hoosiers, who hope to make postseason play.\nBut the game may be only a side-note to the Bennett family reunion.\n"Her mother and I always worry about her," Dick said. "She's been on her own so long. She has to be a little worried about things.\n"I'll try to be in a very inconspicuous spot, watching."\nHer brother, Tony, who is now coaching alongside Dick at UW, and her mother will undoubtedly not be far away.\nThe Bennetts are excited to be in the Big Ten together. They have already made father/daughter history, being the only tandem to have their teams in the NCAA tournament in the same year. Kathi and Dick lost in the first rounds of the 1999 NCAA tourney.\nEven though Dick has a trip to the Final Four along with numerous accolades during his 24-year collegiate coaching career, he humbly touts his daughter as the best coach in the family.\n"All you have to do is look at the two records," he said. "Her record is so much better than mine. She's won a national championship at Oshkosh. She goes to Evansville and turns that program around. \n"I think that her winning percentage is far better than mine, in comparable situations I might add."\nIn fact, Kathi's winning percentage is better. In 12 seasons as a coach, Kathi has complied a 224-103 record, with a 0.685 winning percentage. Her father\'s is a mere 0.637.\n"She's just a better coach," Dick Bennett said. "I can tell you that"