Rivalry, rivalry, rivalry. For some reason, that word just stuck in my head and would not go away, no matter how many people from the two teams told me the game would be nothing special.,”My goal this week was to find someone, anyone, related to either the Marquette or Wisconsin-Milwaukee men's basketball programs who wanted to hype up Friday night's game as the revival of some storied rivalry.

Rivalry, rivalry, rivalry. For some reason, that word just stuck in my head and would not go away, no matter how many people from the two teams told me the game would be nothing special.

In Tuesday's Trib, I wrote about how Tom Crean and his boys weren't all that jacked up about playing the Panthers. At the time, I thought it was just them. Surely, UWM would be excited at the opportunity to knock off its cross-town rivals for the first time in 35 tries.

"It's just another game to me," said UWM senior forward Paige Paulsen, who hails from South Dakota. "I'm not from around here, so I don't get into all that."

"Even though I'm from here, it's just another game," said UWM senior forward Torre Johnson, a Milwaukee native.

So even the players that are from this city don't think the match-up is a big deal. Great. I'm sure the marketing folks at the respective schools had a great time billing this one.

As one final shot, I spoke with former Marquette athletic director Bill Cords. The man was in charge of the university's athletic programs for two decades. If anyone could provide perspective on the atmosphere that once surrounded this match-up, it would be him.

Cords, who retired last year but still maintains a winter home in Milwaukee and is a frequent presence at Marquette athletic events, provided a brief history of how the Marquette vs. UWM series got started.

Interestingly enough, according to Cords, it all began with former Wisconsin-Green Bay head men's basketball coach Dick Bennett. After taking charge of the Phoenix in 1985, Bennett improved his squad to the point at which the media began to clamor for it to square off against some in-state rivals.

Once UWM became a Division I program in 1989, a rotation was arranged in which both teams would face Marquette on a yearly basis. One team would play Marquette in a single game and the other would meet Marquette in its holiday tournament. The next year, the two schools would switch.

Soon after Bennett left to take the head coaching position at Wisconsin, the men's basketball relationship between Marquette and UW-Green Bay began to drift. The series eventually was discontinued.

In 1998, the series with UWM followed suit, though that may have had something to do with the fact Marquette never lost to the Panthers in 34 match-ups.

As educational as that synopsis was, I still had to know: Mr. Cords, what will it take to rebuild Marquette-UWM to the rivalry it was before the series took a nine-year hiatus?

"It never was (a rivalry)," Cords said. "You wouldn't rebuild anything. It's an important non-conference game. That's it. Everything gets us ready to play in the Big East, and that's the deal."

Well fine, then. I give up. It's just another game. No big deal.

Hey, by the way Mr. Cords, are you going to be at the Bradley Center to watch the game Friday night?

"Of course."

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