Penney Finds a Home Half a World Away; Hard-Nosed Play Embraced in Wisconsin
March 17, 2002
Alan Goldenbach, Washington Post Staff Writer

Wisconsin assistant coach Tony Bennett is about to tell the story of how he met Badgers junior guard Kirk Penney. As he starts, Bennett gently rubs his nose and thinks. His memory becomes a little clearer.

Four years ago, Bennett was a player-coach in Penney's native New Zealand, and was speaking to a friend who wanted his opinion of Penney, then a local hot-shot teenager. Bennett invited Penney to join him and a couple of his teammates for a pickup game. The first player guarding Penney lasted only a few minutes, before the two bumped and the player left with a split lip. Bennett stepped in and soon thereafter had a bloody nose after absorbing another collision with Penney. The kid's toughness impressed Bennett, who played with the Charlotte Hornets from 1992 to '95. He invited Penney to his professional team's next practice.

There, Bennett and Penney chased a loose ball, and Penney's right elbow connected with Bennett's nose again, this time breaking it.

"I knew then, that he was either real tough or not very smart," Bennett said laughing. "But I knew from watching him those two times that he was so far ahead of everyone else that I saw in New Zealand. He knew how to shoot the ball and he caught on to everything else so much faster than everyone else."

Penney is indicative of the kind of player Maryland will see from the entire Wisconsin roster today, when the teams meet in the second round of the East Region at MCI Center. While Penney seems like the black sheep on a Wisconsin team that seldom recruits out of state (more than two-thirds of the Badgers are from Wisconsin or a nearby Midwestern state), he suits the profile of the program.

"The program to us is a bunch of guys who are very blue-collar, who are hard-working, who don't want to give up," Wisconsin fifth-year senior forward Charlie Wills said. "He's in that profile. I thought he was a perfect fit for our program when he arrived."

Penney, though, thought he blew his chance that day with Bennett, who was scouting for his father, Dick, then Wisconsin's coach.

"I felt terrible," Penney said, still seemingly a bit remorseful, despite a broad grin. "I mean, here is the first NBA player I had ever met in my life. I admired and respected this guy so much, and, after this, I was all set to just play at Auckland University. But, he made it clear to me that [Wisconsin] is where they wanted me."

As a freshman, Penney was a key reserve on Wisconsin's Final Four team in 2000. Last year, he improved his shooting across the board, and tripled his scoring total.

This year, the 6-foot-5, 205-pound Penney has become a more complete player -- and made his position more difficult to define. He is bigger and stronger than most shooting guards, but a better ball-handler than most small forwards.

"He's one of the good big guards in the country," Maryland Coach Gary Williams said. "I guess that's the best way to describe him."

Byron Mouton, who has a similar build, will draw the defensive assignment on Penney. He has guarded the likes of Connecticut's Caron Butler and Duke's Mike Dunleavy, as well as some smaller guards when Maryland played lesser opponents early in the season.

"He's not just a spot-up shooter," Mouton said. "He likes to post up, shoot the three and do a lot of different things. That makes him tough to defend."

Penney led the team in scoring (15.3 points per game) and was named consensus all-Big Ten, the first such Badger since Michael Finley in 1993, and the fifth overall in the program's 97 years. A Wisconsin victory today would give the Badgers their fifth 20-win season overall, but third in the past four seasons.

Penney's development was apparent in Wisconsin's 80-70 first-round victory over St. John's on Friday, when he scored a team-high 19 points. He only had 16 points combined in his six previous NCAA tournament games.

"When we first got here, we asked him right away to expand his game," Wisconsin first-year coach Bo Ryan said. "We told him that he had to post more, to slash more. He's a sponge. He picks up on everything. He's still a pretty good stand-still shooter. He just needed to add to his game."

And keep his arms away from Bennett.