PROVO — Seeing Ricky Bower's name on the BYU basketball roster and knowing older brother Danny played for the Cougars in the late 1990s, you'd assume some sort of family hoops pipeline runs from the Boise area via Ricks College to Provo.
Well, sort of — except Ricky Bower's pipeline took a detour through Wisconsin. And were it not for a coaching change, he would be a senior there with the Badgers instead of serving as a key sixth man his junior season for the Cougars.
Slowed by a herniated disk aggravated in preseason weightlifting, Bower is averaging 6.4 points a game, fifth highest on the team and top among Cougar reserves. The 6-foot-4 shooting guard sports the team's second-highest assist-to-turnover ratio and a BYU-best 1.88 points-per-shot ratio.
Here's Bower's roundabout route to BYU:
After averaging 26.7 points, 6.5 rebounds and 5.7 assists for Meridian's Skyview High and earning Idaho's Mr. Basketball honors in 1997, he followed Danny's lead to Ricks, where he played a season before leaving for a church mission to Poland. The Viking freshman averaged 16 points a game and 48 percent shooting of 3-pointers and was named Region 18 MVP.
The prevailing post-mission thought — and wishes of the likes of BYU coach Steve Cleveland and Utah counterpart Rick Majerus — was that Bower would return to Ricks for his sophomore season, remove the rust and be ready to play Division I ball his final two years. As for BYU, Cleveland already had guards Trent Whiting and Terrell Lyday.
But Wisconsin wanted Bower right then, telling him he could step in and play on a team coming off the NCAA Final Four and coached by the venerable Dick Bennett.
"It was the perfect system for a white shooting guard," said Bower, mindful of Bennett's penchant for a perimeter sharpshooter.
As a UW sophomore, Bower connected on 44 percent of his 3-pointers and 81 percent of his free throws, with his six 3s against Temple good for ESPN player-of-the-game accolades. Even Bennett's unexpected resignation early in the season — assistant Brad Soderberg was named interim coach — and a couple of personal speedbumps that year didn't deter Bower, who still relishes his Badger-era experiences.
However, Wisconsin opted to hire Bo Ryan over Soderberg, now the head coach at Saint Louis. Bower thought it would be best to look elsewhere, rather than stick it out with a new coach who would install his own system and bring in his own players. Re-enter BYU, with Bower transferring and sitting out last season's games per NCAA rules.
The other Wisconsin follies? The mishandling of transcripts between high school and the university resulted in the NCAA slapping a five-game suspension on Bower, an honors student at Skyview. And when Bower's Sabbath observance took precedence over the Badgers' sole Sunday game (Bennett had initiated the offer when recruiting Bower), some critics said Bower should return one-seventh of his scholarship to the university.
He chuckles at the irony that he misses more church meetings now, traveling on Sunday commercial flights with the BYU team after Saturday night games. BCS football bowl money gleaned by Wisconsin and the Big Ten Conference allows Badger teams to fly chartered jets with prompt return flights on weekends.
Comparing the two long-bomb brothers he has coached, Cleveland calls Danny "more of a catch-and-shoot guy" who came off screens as a spot-up shooter. He gives Ricky the edge in ball-handling, physical strength and ability to create his own shot.
"No one has really seen Ricky in terms of what he's capable of," said Cleveland, hoping Bower will recapture the confidence of last season, with the coach calling the redshirt transfer the best player on the court in Cougar practices last season.
Bower has benefited from Cleveland's recent move to play him strictly at the wing. The back problems limited his defensive stance and abilities, particularly against quicker point guards, and Cleveland wanted Bower's confidence as a shooter and scorer.
No complaints from Bower — "Hey, I like shooting the ball," he says. The results include four 3s two weeks ago against Idaho State, clutch late-game free throws and shooting percentages of .891 at the line and .432 behind the arc. His 16 treys this season have him just one behind Travis Hansen and Kevin Woodberry, tied for second at BYU.
As for that Bower-to-BYU connection, it actually started a generation ago — the brothers' father, the late Wayne Bower, played football for the Cougars. As for the other Bower boys, Greg played at Ricks, overlapping a season with Ricky, before opting for dental school; and Mike will be a returned-missionary sophomore next season at Snow College, since Ricks became BYU-Idaho and dropped athletics after his freshman year.
The baby of the bunch is Jacob, a high school senior attracting plenty of attention. Winning a national shooting-skills contest for youth landed him a spot in the Basketball Hall of Fame; however Jacob is a star prep quarterback who may end up following that same pipeline south — but to play a different sport.
E-mail: taylor@desnews.com