Bucky’s Fan Favorite Tournament Sweet 16: (8) Mark Vershaw vs. (4) Kirk Penney

With COVID-19 crushing everyone’s March Madness vibe, we at B5Q crafted our own tournament to determine which basketball player from the past 20 years was the biggest fan favorite.

With two rounds in the books, we now enter crunch time. It’s the Sweet 16 baby.

For the Sweet 16, we will be dropping two pairings from a singular region each day in separate articles. We at B5Q will state the case for each player, and it is up to you the fans to vote and ultimately decide who moves on and who is eliminated.

First, we turn our attention to the South Region. Just like the first two rounds, the voting window closes at midnight each day, so get those votes in quick.

You can check out the players still vying for the title in the complete bracket...Bucky's Fan Favorite Tournament Bracket.pdf.

The second contest in the East Region Sweet 16 is between two members of the 2000 Final Four team, 8-seed Mark Vershaw and 4-seed Kirk Penney

Vershaw was the leading scorer on the 2000 Final Four team, and the only one to average double digits btw. Looking at his game log, however, you’ll find that he did not have a particularly good Tournament that year. He played well against Arizona in the second round and, uh, that was kind of it.

A native of New Zealand, Penney is one of the most beloved Badgers in the past few decades. He was a part of the 2000 Final Four team as a freshman and then won back-to-back conference titles as a junior and senior. For his career, he averaged 11.4 ppg, 4 rpg and 1.7 apg. During his senior season he averaged a career-high 16.2 ppg, 6 rpg and 3.1 apg.

He now coaches at UVa with Tony Bennett, whose father is Dick Bennett...who was the coach of the 2000 Final Four team. Try and keep up.