Who Are the Biggest Villains in Wisconsin Basketball History?

3. Former Wisconsin Basketball Star – Alando Tucker 

Wisconsin assistant coach Alando Tucker talks with guard D’Mitrik Trice during practice.
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“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” 

When Alando Tucker, the leading scorer in the history of the Wisconsin basketball program, returned to UW in July 2019 as an interim assistant coach (filling in for Howard Moore), many thought it had the potential to be a match made in heaven. 

Well, those people, myself included, were dead-ass wrong. 

Wisconsin faced tremendous adversity in 2019-20, starting with the gut-wrenching Howard Moore accident. Then, Kobe King left the program, and strength & conditioning coach Erik Helland made the news after using a racial epithet in front of players during the season.

During that up-and-down 2019-20 season, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Tucker set up a meeting with former Athletic Director Barry Alvarez. During that meeting, he tried to convince Alvarez to fire Greg Gard and name him the head coach of the Wisconsin basketball program. 

As we all know, Gard rallied the troops, and UW won their final eight games to earn a share of the Big Ten regular-season title and was later named the B1G Coach of the Year. 

But it only got worse from there…

Alando Tucker came back for a second season as an assistant coach on a team that returned seven seniors from 2019-20 and started the year ranked top 10 in the country. 

During that season, Tucker reportedly undermined coach Gard, divided the locker room, and even told a player “to ignore the coaching points of a fellow assistant in charge of that player’s position group.”

After coming in with sky-high expectations, Wisconsin basketball finished with an 18-13 record and went 10-10 in Big Ten play. 

Tucker was not retained as an assistant coach; instead, Greg Gard hired former Badger Sharif Chambliss for the vacant spot on his staff. 

I don’t believe in coincidences…

Shortly after, the Wisconsin State Journal got an anonymous email with a link to a “heavily edited” 37-minute audio file containing snippets of an emotional conversation between coach Gard and the seniors in his locker room. 

Conveniently, the recording only had the portion where the players blasted the head coach. Although Alando Tucker denies any involvement, it doesn’t take a genius to put 2 and 2 together to get 4. 

Tucker was one of my favorite Wisconsin basketball players of my childhood, and I try to hold onto that when his name gets brought up, but there’s no denying he became a villain in the eyes of the program. 

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