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BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer
MADISON, Wis. — Whenever Josh Gasser sees the video, he wonders if they looked hard enough for highlights, shooting highlights. He jokingly brought that up to Zak Showalter recently after one of Gasser's signature moments, maybe his defining moment, was replayed on the Kohl Center scoreboard screen.
"I thought maybe they'd have me making a jumper or something," Gasser kidded.
Instead, it was a save, not a shot; a hustle play, not a scoring play. It was Gasser putting his body on the line and doing whatever it takes to win — just like he had encouraged his Wisconsin teammates to do during a timeout — by diving over the courtside press table chasing a loose ball late in the 2015 Big Ten Tournament championship game.
The Badgers went on to dominate the Spartans in overtime at Chicago's United Center on their way to the title.
Looking back on the impact of his hustle on the outcome, Gasser confided, "That was definitely one of my favorite plays in my career, for sure. Not many guys would say their favorite play was diving into the stands saving a ball. I think most people would have a dunk or a big three or something like that.
"But those types of plays are stuff that I remember — little plays that kind of go unnoticed that help your team win games. When I'm watching Showy out there, I see him doing a lot of that, too. Maybe not a lot of people notice, but I do."
Gasser first took notice of Showalter on the AAU circuit with the Wisconsin Swing.
"He was a tough kid," remembered Gasser, the former UW captain/catalyst. "He was a guy you wanted on your team, because he was always taking charges and driving to the hoop hard. He was just playing at a really winning level."
Gasser saw himself in Showalter, two years his junior.
"I think Showy and I have similar DNA in terms of what we're made of and what we can bring to the team," Gasser conceded.
Wisconsin coach Greg Gard had no trouble connecting the dots between Gasser and Showalter.
"Those are the guys I've always called the mortar between the bricks," Gard said. "You can go back through the history of the program and we've had several.
"These guys might not statistically jump off the page at you. At the same time, they're so vital in terms of your program, your offseason, your locker room. Talent can take you so far, but you better have a chemistry and a culture with it. Josh was a big piece of that. Zak is a big piece of that now."
Steve Showalter has a unique perspective in that he coached his oldest son, Zak, at Germantown High School and coached against Gasser, who starred at Port Washington. Germantown and Port Washington are in Wisconsin's North Shore Conference and 22 miles apart.
"When he was younger, Josh was skinny, all skin and bones and a lot longer than Zak," he recalled. "But you could see then the burning desire to win. When Josh got to Madison, every single play, every single call, he wanted to win that little battle every single time in order to win the war."
Steve Showalter saw the same things in Josh and Zak that many others did.
"I saw the similarities as far as the competitiveness and the desire to do whatever it takes to help your team win," he said. "When Josh was at Port, he had to carry his team a lot more than Zak did. But their contributions in the long run, and by the end of a game, looked pretty similar."
As a prep and collegian, Gasser has been a role model for Zak Showalter.
"I remember watching him play against my dad's team, I was in the seventh grade and he was on the varsity contributing as a freshman," Zak said. "He was a player that I could kind of relate to with my skill set and I tried to form my game around some of the things that I saw him doing."
Their bond has grown stronger over the years.
"He has pretty much paved the way for me in my whole career and everything I've done," said Showalter, who's hoping to play overseas next season. "And I'll go back to him and ask questions about what the process is. Since I was 17 years old, I've been going to Josh with questions about things."
Showalter, who just turned 23, has gone to school on Gasser, who will be 25 in February.
"It's awesome to hear Showy say he has tried to learn from me," said Gasser, whose post-UW career has been put on hold again while rehabbing from groin surgery. "And it's great to see him do what he has done. I'm flattered to be compared to Showy. He's a good guy to be compared to."
• • • •
But how does Showalter compare to Showalter? Father like son? Or not?
Steve Showalter, a Baraboo, Wisconsin, native, was a member of Bo Ryan's first recruiting class at UW-Platteville. Showalter twice led the Pioneers in scoring. As a senior, he averaged 21 points and earned Division III All-America recognition.
"Zak has got that same toughness — with how hard he plays — and that chip on his shoulder that Steve always played with," said Gard, a Ryan assistant at Platteville. "Obviously, there's a size differential and their positions are different, too. They're different in terms of how they played.
"But I see the same love for the game and the same energy."
"I was a scorer for my teams," Steve Showalter said. "But I also was a pretty good passer and saw things happening a little bit ahead of when they actually happened. That just comes from playing the game. Some people have that sense, some don't. Zak definitely sees the floor like I did."
Competition was a way of life for the Showalter boys, Zak and his younger brother Jake, now a junior on the Platteville team. When they were younger, they would head to the park with their dad after he got home from working his 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. shift as a Germantown police officer.
"That was just the type of family I grew up in — we were always playing sports," said Zak, who started playing basketball around the third grade with some of the older kids. "I was a little ahead of the curve in terms of my athleticism at times. And I think my dad was just a coach by nature."
Steve Showalter was so much more. During his 15 seasons as Germantown's head coach, he posted a 286-81 record (.779) and won state titles in 2012, 2013 and 2014. After a one-year stint as a college assistant at Lindenwood (Missouri), he's running his own high school program again at Menomonee Falls (Wisconsin).
"Zak used to come and practice with us (the Germantown varsity team) when he was in the seventh and eighth grade," Steve said. "The year before his freshman season, he started to get picked in the top five or six picks when they had open gym, and we were pretty good at the time.
"Athletically, you could tell he was maturing and growing into his body and you could also tell that he would be able to compete at a pretty high level as he got older."
Although he read books on the positives and negatives of coaching your own children — "I know some coaches would try to make their own kid be the superstar and score all the points" — Steve stressed that "Zak never wanted that and I never wanted that… I loved coaching both my sons."
Zak did acknowledge the challenge playing for his dad.
"It was very hard at first," he said. "I felt I had to listen to him coaching me for years, so I felt like I knew a lot of the answers and what he was looking for. But there were times when I would mess up and I wouldn't want to hear about me messing up. So I would go home salty or something like that.
"That was just about me maturing and respecting his word."
Germantown won its first of three state championships when Zak was a senior. There were scholarship offers from Missouri Valley Conference and Horizon League programs. But he had his heart set on something else. "He wanted to be a Badger. He always wanted to be a Badger," Steve said.
Ryan talked to him about walking on with the potential of earning a scholarship. He jumped at it. "Once Coach Ryan called him and asked him to come to Madison," Steve said, "he didn't want to look at anything else, he didn't even want to talk about anything else. It was an easy decision for him."
Showalter was planning on redshirting as a UW freshman.
"I was going to take the typical path that most kids do," he said.
But then Gasser blew out his knee and was sidelined for the season with a torn ACL.
"Josh went down," he said, "and my whole plan changed."
By that point, Showalter had already made a positive impression on Gasser.
"I remember him from that first open gym that summer, he went up and grabbed the rim about 30 times, he was flying in from the 3-point line trying to dunk it," said Gasser, who told him to chill. "That's when I realized this kid is really aggressive, deceptively athletic and knows how to play the game."
Showalter also got Frank Kaminsky's attention during that first open gym.
"My first two plays of my college career, I had two tip-dunks on Frank," he said. "Guys didn't box me out and that was kind of my forte — crashing from the 3-point line when guys weren't expecting me to come in. I remember Frank getting really upset and saying, 'Box this bleeping guy out.'"
Sam Dekker was the freshman headliner and only other player in Wisconsin's 2012 recruiting class. "Sam was playing with Team USA that first summer," Showalter said. "So I was going through that freshman transition all by myself. I had to grow up pretty quick."
As a true freshman, he got limited playing time in 22 games.
With Gasser coming back the following season, Showalter elected to redshirt.
"It was tough because I knew how good we could be that year," Showalter said. "It was my decision, but we definitely had some long talks with Coach Ryan about what would be best and, sure enough, I think I made the right decision. It was a great development year for me (on the scout team)."
The Badgers made it to the Final Four that season.
"He wanted to be out there with his buddies," Steve Showalter said. "At the same time, he's not a selfish kid and he knew that he was contributing every day in practice. It worked out in the long run."
Especially since UW returned to the Final Four in 2015 with Showalter playing a role off the bench.
The past two seasons, while trying to get healthy and extend his playing career in Europe, Gasser has kept tabs on the UW program and Showalter. "To see him progress," he said, "to not only contribute, but to be a 30-minute starter on a really good team, I'm proud of what he has done."
That has extended off the court as Showalter has prepared himself for life after basketball with a double-major in risk management and finance at Wisconsin. In addition to studying abroad in Greece and Italy this past summer, he used an internship at Merrill Lynch as a vehicle to "experience what the working world is like."
But he was quick to add, "I want to play basketball as long as I can play basketball."
You know where he got that mindset from.
"He's so mature and he's done so well embracing the whole college atmosphere," Steve was saying now. "He has used his basketball abilities to get him to where he needs to go as far as making contacts in the business world. He really has a good head on his shoulders."
He's also convinced that his heart is in the right place. "Growing up, I dreamed of being a Badger," Zak reiterated. "And it's everything I could have dreamed of."
In this context, then, what will be his defining moment, his signature video? Gasser had his. "That was a game-winning play in a huge Big Ten championship game," Showalter said. "I can only dream of having a play like that."
It was suggested that Showalter would be remembered for drawing a charge on Xavier's Edmund Sumner in last season's NCAA tournament.
Bronson Koenig had just nailed a 3-pointer to tie the score. And thanks to Showalter's heads-up defensive play with 4.3 seconds left, the Badgers got one more possession and Koenig capitalized by hitting a triple from the deep right corner to win the game and propel Wisconsin into the Sweet 16.
But Showalter wasn't willing to commit to that play being his defining play, not yet, not with so much more basketball remaining and perhaps an opportunity to create another moment/memory in March.
Why stop dreaming now? Gasser, after all, played in two Final Fours. Showalter has played in one. "Josh has done a lot of important things for this program," Showalter said. "And to try to continue that legacy that he has built during his time here is something I'm trying to do now."
You can count on one thing: Gasser will be watching and pulling for him.
