By now of course Jeff Nordgaard is a marked man. Three days ago nobody in Ogden knew who he was and that went for the rest of the country if you didn't count Green Bay, Wisconsin. But then Nordgaard scored 24 points, including the game-winning basket, against the California Golden Bears in Thursday's NCAA opener in the Dee Center, and now he can't go anywhere without being recognized as the guy who sent Jason Kidd back to class.
All of which is uncharted territory for the 6-foot-6, 226-pound Nordgaard, sophomore star of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay basketball team that next plays Syracuse in a second-round NCAA game in the Dee Center.Even when you're the biggest man on campus, when you grow up in Dawson, Minnesota (pop. 1,626), you get used to obscurity. Dawson is located 150 miles due west of Minneapolis-St. Paul and 20 miles due east of South Dakota and Nordgaard was born and raised there. There were 47 students, boys and girls, in his graduating class at Dawson-Boyd High School, where Nordgaard was your basic whale in the pond. He averaged 27 points, 18 rebounds and six assists as a basketball player and as a quarterback on the football team he passed for 53 touchdowns and 4,623 yards in his prep career. The yardage total ranks No. 7 on the all-time national high school list, just ahead of Jeff George of the Indianapolis Colts.
A lot of high school athletes didn't have Nordgaard's numbers, but they didn't have his address either.
He was not heavily recruited. He was hardly recruited at all. South Dakota State, an NCAA Div. II school, considered giving him a football scholarship, but then gave it to somebody else. That left the offer from Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota, a Div. III school that wanted Nordgaard to do what he'd done in high school: help them out in both sports.
But as Nordgaard was considering a college career in Aberdeen, somebody gave Dick Bennett, the basketball coach at Wisconsin-Green Bay, a videotape of one of Nordgaard's western Minnesota high school outbursts. As it happened, Bennett had just lost a Minnesota recruit named Ramon Knopper to Bowling Green. Sight unseen, he called and offered Nordgaard a scholarship, which he promptly accepted.
"Only Division I school that wanted me," Nordgaard said Thursday. "Wyoming did make a home visit one time for football, but then I didn't hear from them again."
Nordgaard's matriculation to a school of higher learning took a decidedly different route, then, from the likes of, say, California's Kidd, who may have had one Division I school that didn't recruit him.
But as is common in the NCAA tournament, the little-known and the well-known were thrown together on the same court Thursday afternoon - and charm took over after that. Kidd will no doubt go on to make millions, win dozens of trophies, and set records. But on this occasion, much to the delight of underdog fans everywhere, it was the little-known player who came out on top.
"Our athletic ability doesn't match up to theirs. Doesn't even come close," said Nordgaard.
"I guess that's what makes it a little more special - especially for the students back at G.B.," he said. "We beat a lottery guy."
Making it even more special was the appearance of John and Eleanor Nordgaard, Jeff's parents, who walked into the gym not long before Thursday's tipoff. The Nordgaards hadn't planned on flying to Ogden, which is no easy trick in itself, but then they thought, well, why not, it isn't everyday somebody from Dawson is in the NCAA tournament, so they caught a plane Thursday morning for Salt Lake City and then drove to Ogden.
"Maybe they had a hunch," said Jeff.
They were able to see Green Bay play its best defense of the season, and they were able to see Jeff play the best game of his life. Besides his 24 points, on 12-of-20 shooting, he also had nine rebounds and the Most Valuable Timeout in Wisconsin-Green Bay history. It was Nordgaard who alertly realized that teammate Eric LeDuc was in jeopardy of being tied up with the score tied at 57-all and just 1:03 remaining, and that the possession arrow pointed to California. So he signaled for a timeout, after which he made a 12-foot baseline jumpshot - his third basket in a row - to give Green Bay enough points for its ultimate 61-57 win.
California's Kidd tried to answer Nordgaard and tie the game, but the famous All-American punctuated a 4-of-17 shooting slump by missing an 18-foot jumpshot.
After that, it was all over for Nordgaard but the adoration, the interviews, and finding his parents a hotel room. Their stay in Ogden, and his, was going to be a little longer than a lot of people (recruiters included) would have ever guessed.