UW women's basketball legend Theresa Huff to have her No. 21 retired before Sunday's game
One of the greatest Badgers to ever lace 'em up, Huff will be the first woman to have her jersey hanging in the Kohl Center rafters.
I am not well-versed in the history of Wisconsin’s women’s basketball program. Growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia we didn’t get a ton of Badgers men’s basketball or football on TV, let alone women’s hoops. Even when I started attending school at UW I didn’t pay super-close attention to the women’s program outside of reading articles in the Badger Herald or Daily Cardinal when I should’ve been paying attention in class.
I remember reading stories about Jolene Anderson and Janese Banks, and knew they were good, but I hadn’t heard of program legends like Barb Franke or Jessie Stomski or Robin Threatt and I certainly hadn’t heard of Theresa Huff, whose career finished at UW two years before I, an old person on the internet, was even born.
Over the past few years as I’ve tried to get more than a surface-level understanding of women’s college basketball, I’ve also tried to learn a little bit about Wisconsin’s history. Most everyone who watches college basketball knows about Pat Summit’s Tennessee Volunteers or Rebecca Lobo, Kara Wolters, and Nykesha Sales’ 1995 undefeated UConn Huskies team or Cheryl Miller’s USC teams…but the Badgers haven’t really been a national player in women’s hoops.
That doesn’t mean Wisconsin didn’t have important players or important teams, it just means that there wasn’t much coverage of women’s basketball in the 80s/90s/00s outside of your local market.
So, slowly but surely, I’ve been reading about Wisconsin women’s basketball’s history. There are a bunch of old media guides that you can access online that are awesome to read. UWBadgers.com has updated record books every season that give you a sense of where the current players stand historically in the program and so I have obviously come across Theresa Huff’s name a bunch.
Huff will have her No. 21 jersey officially retired and raised to the rafters of the Kohl Center on Sunday before Wisconsin’s game against Northwestern. She is the first woman to have her jersey retired by UW and she’ll join Frank Kaminsky (No. 44), Michael Finley (No. 24) and Ab Nicholas (No. 8) from men's basketball and Mark Johnson from men's hockey (No. 10) as one of five Badgers to earn the honor.
According to Andy Baggot’s informative and excellent post about Huff, her jersey was unofficially retired by UW head coach Edwina Qualls the year after Huff graduated, but there was no real ceremony and, as anyone who has been in the Kohl Center ever could tell you, no jersey hanging over the court. Sean Davis at BadgerExtra also has a great article about Huff, her career at UW, and her feelings about her number being retired.
"I don't remember anyone ever telling me," Huff said to Baggot. "I don't remember how it happened."
The 5-foot-11 Huff, a native of Milwaukee and graduate of Riverside University High School, played for Wisconsin from 1979-1983. She was inducted into the UW Hall of Fame in 1998 and left Madison as UW’s career leader in points, rebounds, field goals made, and games played.
She led the Badgers to their first ever postseason appearance, was a finalist for the 1983 Wade Trophy (which recognizes the top collegiate player in the nation), was named UW’s team MVP three times, and was the first American woman chosen to play pro basketball in Spain.
Huff is still the fifth leading scorer (1,879) in program history, has the second most made field goals (823) and holds the record for most rebounds in a game (23), most field goals made in a game (14), most rebounds in a season (394, and she also has the second most rebounds in a season…and the fourth most), the top three best rebounding seasons by game (11.6, 11.2, 9.8), the top three most double-doubles in a season (23, 16, 15), and the most career rebounds (1,201) ever. She is still tenth in career blocked shots (106) and seventh in steals (241)!
She had streaks of eight and seven games respectively of recording a double-double, which are the top two marks in program history. Her name is littered across the top-tens for freshman year performances and, perhaps most impressively, she is one of only two players (men’s or women’s) to end their career in the 1,000-point/1,000-rebound club. She was the only player to do so until Ethan Happ joined her in 2019.
The game against Northwestern is during Wisconsin’s celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day. While women’s sports, and basketball in particular, are probably “bigger” than they’ve ever been, there is still plenty of work to be done to get women’s basketball to the same level of respect and coverage as men’s basketball.
Players like Huff, who starred in a time where few people outside of their college towns even knew their name, set the foundation for the sport to grow and most likely inspired girls in Milwaukee and Madison and throughout the state of Wisconsin to pick up a basketball.
“At the time I didn’t realize how big of a deal [making the postseason] was,” Huff told Davis of BadgerExtra. “In today’s world, we would have been in the Sweet 16. I think that was one of the turning points of our program to be successful and we started getting more people interested in watching women’s basketball.”
Her younger sister, Janet (Huff) Dyer, was also a member of the basketball team for three years with Theresa and ended her own career with several program records, said this to BadgerExtra:
“I think something this does is it gives girls who live all over Wisconsin an opportunity to see what’s possible. Amazing things are possible here at the University of Wisconsin, and when they have the opportunity to select the Badgers, they will.”
It may be a long overdue honor for Huff to see her number raised up, but hopefully she thinks it was all still worth it.
Nice article. I like you don’t have a great sense of the history past 20 years ago. I wonder who else will have their number retired. Jolene is an obvious choice.