Twenty years ago this month, Green Bay Preble senior Tony Bennett was named Wisconsin's Mr. Basketball.

Fifteen years ago, Wausaukee's Anthony Pieper earned the same honor.

Both went on to distinguished collegiate playing careers, Bennett at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and Pieper at Marquette.

Since, more than a dozen boys prep stars with ties to the Green Bay area have spent time with NCAA Division I basketball programs. But none has approached the profile of Bennett or Pieper, and recent years have produced strikingly few players capable of making a mark at college basketball's highest level.

A Press-Gazette study conducted last month tallied 55 Wisconsin players among the 4,719 players on 329 Division I men's basketball rosters nationwide. Only one — Northern Iowa sophomore Adam Koch, who starred at Ashwaubenon High School — is from the Press-Gazette's coverage area, which includes more than 40 school districts.

The state generally produces only one or two top 100 recruits a year, so the area's lack of a blue-chip national prospect may be as much about numbers as anything else. But compared to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the likes of Bennett, Pieper and De Pere Pennings' Kevin Rankin prowled area courts, the area is experiencing a drought.

Not even those who know the area game best can say for certain why the area has lacked those types of stars in recent years. Changing recruiting patterns, ineffective feeder programs, the popularity of high school football and simple demographics are possibilities.

The most common explanation provided in interviews the past week, though, was the obvious one:

The talent isn't there.

"Kids think they want to play beyond high school, but they really don't know how to go about it," said Woody Wilson, a longtime college assistant coach who has run youth basketball camps for more than 25 years. "Tony Bennett, he would spend an incredible amount of time in the gym. So many kids think, 'Well, I go to practice and maybe I should run a few minutes after, or I go to summer league or I go to team camp or I play AAU ball.' But how many of them are working on skill development to get their game better?"

By the numbers

Rewind to March 1994.

Bennett is playing for the NBA's Charlotte Hornets. Pieper is on Marquette's first conference-championship team. Rankin is wrapping up a stellar career at Northwestern University and about to begin a nine-year professional career overseas. Green Bay Southwest alumnus Chris Conger is on his way to earning a scholarship at the University of Wisconsin. Wausaukee's Ryan Duessler has begun a prep career that nets a scholarship to Loyola University in Chicago.

Now, fast forward to September 2005, when Koch becomes the first player from the metro area to commit to a Division I school in nearly five years. His brother, Jake, signed with Northern Iowa in November, doubling the area's D-I presence from within the same bloodline.

"I don't think Green Bay is a place where a college recruiter would just naturally think about recruiting," said Jerry Meyer, a national analyst for the recruiting Web site Rivals.com.

"There's perceived hotbeds of talent, and college recruiters naturally gravitate toward those areas. In certain years, those areas may not be that much better than just another area of the country. There's patterns in recruiting, and Green Bay just isn't in that mix."

But it was roughly a decade ago, at least to a greater extent.

Duessler — who ranks seventh on Wisconsin's career scoring list with 2,354 points, more than 1,000 behind Pieper's state-record 3,391 — signed with Loyola but didn't play because of a heart condition. De Pere's Craig Haese became an all-conference player at Youngstown State. Green Bay Notre Dame's Colin Davis signed with Columbia of the Ivy League in 2000.

Several area standouts — including Green Bay East's Kevin Olm, Ashwaubenon's Ryan Borowicz and Seymour's Paul Kraft — were contributors on UWGB teams in the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, the Phoenix hasn't had an area player since Sturgeon Bay's Brandon Hansen, a transfer from Division II Minnesota-Crookston who started 19 games as a walk-on in 2002-03, and left after playing one season.

Of the 10 players named Press-Gazette player of the year over the past decade, only Adam Koch has made an impact at the Division I level. Seymour's Kyle Grusczynski, who won the award in 2000, spent one season at UW before leaving the team. Bay Port's Tyrone Deacon (2003) was a walk-on at Michigan State for one season, then transferred to Division II UW-Parkside. Last year's winner, Matt Hackl of Seymour, received a scholarship offer from UW-Green Bay before his junior year but didn't accept and ended up at Division II Concordia University in St. Paul, Minn.

Other recent standouts, such as De Pere's Kael Coleman and Green Bay East's Harry Boyce, also have accepted Division II scholarships.

"A few players may have been overlooked from this area that could be playing at that (Division I) level," said former Press-Gazette sports writer Jim Hayes, an assistant coach for the past six years at East. "I think it's just a matter of time before we get some quality players who are going to start going Division I, really, on a fairly consistent level."

Deron Washington, who spent a year at Green Bay Notre Dame before finishing high school in Maryland, is a starter for Virginia Tech. That's about as close as the area has come to having a native son with a major program since Pieper's career ended in 1997.

Developing game

Though it's unclear exactly what effect it has had, the dip in the area's output over the past 15 years has coincided with the rise of Wisconsin's club basketball scene.

"In the late '80s, early '90s, maybe 10, 15 kids in the entire state of Wisconsin were playing in what would be now the early stages of AAU organization," said Loyola assistant coach Lance Randall, who coached Oshkosh West High School's state championship teams the past two seasons. "Now, basketball is an 11-month sport. Maybe there are just as good of players in the Green Bay area, but there's more good basketball players in the entire state of Wisconsin competing for those scholarships."

The shoe company-driven AAU industry has impacted recruiting patterns, because college coaches can see hundreds of top prospects at a single "live" event, and impacted players, who are scouted as early as elementary school and crisscross the country with statewide all-star teams.

Ritchie Davis started Fox Valley Skillz in 2000 with a ninth-grade team that included Deacon and future University of Wisconsin standout Brian Butch, who went to Appleton West High School. The Skillz since have merged with another club to form the Wisconsin Playground Warriors and have a dozen teams, the youngest a third-grade boys squad that includes the sons of Marquette coach Tom Crean and Milwaukee Bucks coach Larry Krystkowiak. Two years ago, Davis' top team had nine Division I kids on a 12-player roster.

De Pere sophomore Brandon Pritzl and Green Bay East freshman Tevin Taylor are the only area players in the program.

"Certainly, there are a lot of good coaches and good programs there," said Davis, a former high school coach who played at UW-Superior. "You'd think with the abundance of youth programs that have been put in place in the last eight to 10 years within the whole metro area that you'd probably even see a little bit more talent."

There are AAU teams based in Northeastern Wisconsin, too, but none that play as extensive a national schedule. Many prep programs field summer-league teams.

Feeder programs for younger players are the most logical target for scrutiny. At least on some level, the expansion of the area's youth programs and the rise of girls basketball may have exceeded the supply of people capable of developing young players.

"I think that kind of diluted a little bit of the coaching," Wilson said of girls basketball, which has produced far more Division I players from the area in recent years. "Then, I think a lot of (coaches) are getting out of it just simply because people are never happy anymore. The guy can be a good coach, but they're on him because they're not playing the right kids or they're not running the right offense or not playing the right defense, you're not beating the team by as much as you should be, whatever it may be, which is too bad. There's times, especially in high school, that you just don't have the caliber of players to be a great team every year."

Team success also has been somewhat elusive, particularly within Green Bay. No city public school team has reached a state championship game; none even made it to sectionals this year.

"I think that goes hand-in-hand with the lack of individual talent that you've seen through the years," Hayes said. "Green Bay's just lagged behind the other areas."

Other factors

Basketball doesn't have a major competitor among winter sports in the area. Prep hockey is in its infancy, and though wrestling is a staple, it doesn't generally draw from the same talent pool.

The greater influence might be high school football, which like basketball, requires a significant offseason commitment.

"If you're not a phenomenal athlete physically at an early age, it's difficult to compete for the Division I scholarships if you're playing three sports," Randall said. "And I think that's a travesty. It's not always the case, but it's become more of the norm in the last 10 years as well. So, if you have an area that maybe has more of a football or more of a baseball or track-and-field background, maybe — while you can have excellent coaching in basketball and you can have very good teams — you maybe won't develop the individual players to what is now the Division I norm."

Davis is quick to note many of his players also participate in football because AAU basketball hits its peak in the spring and summer. But in this area, there's no question football takes on the profile afforded basketball in similar-sized states like Indiana, which has 143 players in Division I basketball. The basketball culture there has been cultivated for generations.

"It's sort of like the Zeitgeist," Meyer said. "The dream is to be as good a basketball player as you can be, so they're getting an enormous amount of reps at an early age, and there's an infrastructure there within the community to enhance a young basketball player's talent, to help a kid max out, and there's a certain love for the game."

Demographics are a factor, too. As in most states, the larger cities with denser populations produce the lion's share of Wisconsin's top basketball players.

Forty-three of the state's 55 Division I players (78.1 percent) are from Milwaukee, Dane or bordering counties. Those areas are more culturally diverse and, in the case of Milwaukee County, more financially challenged.

"The basketball is more important down here. It's more of a prestige sport," said Deacon's father, Paul, the former coach at Ashwaubenon and Bay Port who is the coach and athletic director at Burlington Catholic Central. "Kids in the city — Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, Madison — they're playing it all the time, and the kids in the areas around that area are playing it all the time, and the ones that are playing all the time are doing well. That's more of a presence down here than up there.

"However, I think that landscape is changing. I think there's going to be more and more players up there that can do it."

The future

There's little to indicate the tide will turn rapidly, though Pritzl and Taylor are considered among the state's best in their respective classes.

Wisconsin Basketball Yearbook, which compiles top 50 rankings for seniors and juniors and top 25 rankings for sophomores and freshmen, has five area seniors ranked this year: Jake Koch (No. 4), Bay Port's Cole Meyer (31), Ashwaubenon's Jeremy Paprocki (38), Suring's Josh Regal (39) and Southern Door's Derik Hawkey (40). However, only one player from each of the next three classes are on the respective lists: Marinette's Ben Kitkowski (29th-ranked junior), Pritzl (11th-ranked sophomore) and Taylor (14th-ranked freshman).

"There's not an easy answer as to why" there aren't more top prospects from the area, said Mark Miller, who has published the Wisconsin Basketball Yearbook since 1985. "I think the coaches are good. The best athletes for the most part are playing. It might just be lack of talent, period."

Regal, who will lead Suring in a WIAA Division 4 state semifinal on Friday, has committed to Lakeland College, a Division III school in Sheboygan. Cole Meyer also is considered a Division III prospect, but coach Nate Rykal said he's hopeful Bay Port's appearance in the Division 1 bracket "might open a few more eyes and open some doors for Cole" to scholarship programs.

"It's a lot harder nowadays to slip through the cracks," Jerry Meyer said, "(but) players do that, and maybe they don't play at as high a level as maybe they could have played if they'd been in a different area of the country or played for a more high-profile AAU team."

A little luck aside, it comes down to the individual.

"We have everything organized for these kids, but they're not working on the skill development," Wilson said. "They're not getting to the gym and taking 500 shots, a thousand shots a day."

Pieper came from a basketball family and lived near school, making the gymnasium his home away from home.

Bennett's workouts — 90 minutes by himself in the morning, 90 minutes by himself in the afternoon — have become legendary.

"If the athleticism isn't in great supply, then that's where skill development takes on even a higher priority," said Brad Soderberg, the former UW and Saint Louis University coach who grew up in Stevens Point. "Case in point: Tony Bennett. I remember him when I was playing at UW-Stevens Point, and he was just a scrawny coach's kid shooting on the side bucket. He just looked like everybody else walking down the street. But he just passionately embraced the idea of becoming the most skilled player he could, and then he did everything he could to get everything out of his body what he could.

"As they say, the rest is history."

Sidebar: State's best recruits stay true to their schools

Wisconsin doesn't produce elite men's basketball players at a high rate, but the ones that do emerge rarely leave the state.

Compared to the other 49 states and the District of Columbia, Wisconsin's 55 players on Division I rosters rank 23rd overall and 37th per capita, based on 2006 U.S. Census Bureau population estimates.

According to Dave Telep, national recruiting director for the recruiting Web site Scout.com, the small recruiting pool has played a large role in keeping Wisconsin's "loyalty" rate as good as any in the country. Since 2000, the state's two major programs — the University of Wisconsin and Marquette University — have signed 81 percent of in-state players on Scout.com's top 100 list.

"There's clearly an allegiance to the universities within the state," Telep said. "When the number (of elite players) is smaller, it definitely helps the in-state schools more to keep that allegiance high. You basically have the two choices for the high majors in the school, and then, since the number of actual top 100 players isn't a great number, the likelihood of those guys being spread out over multiple classes is greater. So, you have room for more of them."

In the past five graduating classes, seven Wisconsin high school players were ranked among the nation's 100 best by Scout.com or Rivals.com, and only one — Wauwatosa East guard Jerry Smith, who went to the University of Louisville — signed with an out-of-state program. Brian Butch (Appleton West), Greg Stiemsma (Randolph), Marcus Landry (Milwaukee Vincent), Trevon Hughes (a Queens, N.Y., native who attended St. John's Academy in Delafield) and Keaton Nankivil (Madison Memorial) all signed with UW, while Wesley Matthews (Madison Memorial) went to Marquette.

Milwaukee Pius point guard Korie Lucious, the state's only top 100 recruit this year, bucked the trend by signing with Michigan State. Scout.com has a Wisconsin player ranked in the top 10 among the 2009 and 2010 classes — Racine Horlick forward Jamil Wilson is sixth among juniors, while Eau Claire North's 6-11 center Evan Anderson is 10th among sophomores — and both list UW and Marquette among the schools they're considering.

California has the most Division I players with 417, followed by Texas (362), New York (288) and Illinois (214), though none of those states are in the top 10 per capita. The District of Columbia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi and Indiana produce Division I players at the highest rate relative to population.

"If you took the best 10 players in Wisconsin and had them match up against the best 10 in any other state, we would do fine," said former UW and St. Louis University coach Brad Soderberg, a Stevens Point native. "But if you ask us to take our Nos. 31 to 40 and play the Nos. 31 to 40 out of New York or (North) Carolina or Florida, now you run into some problems. It just has more to do with a numbers issue. We don't have the depth of talent."

Eleven players on UW's roster are listed as being from Wisconsin — the most of the state's four Division I programs. UW-Green Bay has eight, UW-Milwaukee six and Marquette three. The 50.9 percent of Wisconsin's Division I-bound players who choose an in-state school is well above the national average of 36.2 percent.

"They have a high basketball IQ, and they're usually pretty rugged, seem to be physical," Jerry Meyer, national analyst for Rivals.com, said of Wisconsin players. "It sort of matches, a lot of times, what you see out of the colleges in that area."

The only other school with more than one Wisconsin player is Loyola University in Chicago, which has three.