Carter Higginbottom, 'Boogie,' Shines in His Roles for Wisconsin
The lights dimmed inside the Kohl Center on a Feb. 9 afternoon as Wisconsin and Ohio State were minutes from tipping off in a key Big Ten basketball clash. The announced lineup for the Buckeyes commenced with jeering from the UW faithful and student section, but the attention quickly turned to the opposite side of the floor.
As Wisconsin PA announcer Mike Mahnke's voice boomed across the arena's sound system, applause erupted for each Badger starter as the red lights and smoke filled the arena.
After Nate Reuvers rose from his chair and proceeded through the line, the players huddled around one particular teammate for a pregame ritual.
Now, it's Boogie's time to shine.
Carter Higginbottom, the redshirt freshman guard, busted out a few dance moves with his Badgers brethren encircling him. The team rhythmically chanted "hey" a few times before he concluded, and the team came together for once last breakdown before tipoff.
Higginbottom -- or "Boogie," as his teammates refer to him -- started performing this pregame dance during the 2018-19 season. He continued to do so last year during a campaign that triumphantly yet abruptly ending with Wisconsin claiming a share of the Big Ten regular season championship.
He may have played in only nine games, just about nine minutes total, but he embraced his roles both in scout team and hyping his teammates up.
“Everyone loves 'Boogie,'" forward Micah Potter said on Feb. 7.
"He's kind of like the comical character on the team, like gets guys laughing, kind of take that deep breath, kind of relaxes them. Just because with the way that he carries himself and messes around with others and all that kind of stuff, he's just kind of like that comical relief, but he also gets us hyped up.
"He does a really good job of getting us going in pre-games. We have our pregame huddles like right before we go to our bench or our final huddle before they go out to the floor, he does that little dance thing. But then also before we come out of the tunnel, he does something similar and gets us going. If you guys know 'Boogie,' he's hilarious, but he also just loves this university, loves this team and just wants to make sure we're successful so whatever he's gonna do, being a walk-on, that he can do to help make us successful, he's gonna do it.”
How and when Higginbottom slid into this routine started last season. He recalled Ethan Happ, Wisconsin's former All-American forward, wanting him to do it.
The 6'0 guard believes they wanted him to take on those duties "because I was probably the best dancer on the team when I first came here."
So "Boogie" derived from his dancing ability, right?
“No, it started with my one teammate freshman year," Higginbottom said on Feb. 7. "He called me 'Boogie,' because like, when we play one-on-one, I would just like dance with the ball so it looked like a little dance. That's where I got 'Boogie,' and then I really started dancing so it just worked.
"Then Coach (Greg) Gard heard about it, and then just after Coach Gard started calling me 'Boogie,' it just stuck.”
A lot of Higginbottom's ideas for dances come from the music industry, watching music videos.
"You see a lot of hip hop artists, they do a lot of different dances," Higginbottom said. "So I get it through that, or some of my teammates like Aleem Ford or D’Mitrik Trice. … They'll be watching a video on Instagram, and they'll be like, 'Look at this, ‘Boogs,’ and I'm like, 'I gotta try that.' So I kind of get inspiration from that and watching other people."
As of early February, he believed the biggest dance came from the song "Bop" from rapper DaBaby, calling it his favorite because he thinks his teammates love it.
“I actually made my own spin off of it so they enjoy that too," Higginbottom said, "and they think it's pretty funny."
From Higginbottom's perspective, he believes those dances get his team excited, but he said he also gives a speech before the players run out for the layup lines prior to the game.
"I just think it's like you get the emotions going with a really serious, impactful just like a few words, and then you run out there. Then after warm ups and the national anthem, very serious moments, and you just kind of get people loose, in the swing like, 'This is basketball. We're here. We're gonna have some fun and we're gonna win.'"
Aside from those duties, Higginbottom -- whose father, Elzie, is a 2019 UW Athletics Hall of Fame inductee that claimed All-American honors and Big Ten championships in the 1960s -- works on the scout team. His goal is to push the guards during practices, adapting and playing opponents' defenses to give the team the right looks.
Assistant coach Joe Krabbenhoft believes Higginbottom "is as good a teammate as there is out there." When asked after Wisconsin's senior night win over Northwestern on March 4, Gard cited the Chicago native's energy and ability to prepare his teammates.
“I'm not going to get in a dance-off with him, I know that, and I don't know what he talks about in the huddle," Gard said. "I leave that up to the players, but he's a great young man that's doing really well here. He's been a great scout team guy, brings it every day, practices extremely hard."
Brevin Pritzl stated that Higginbottom, who he calls "a little fireball," provides something different than just a speech and locks the players in for a "centering moment."
Trice said Higginbottom "brings a whole different energy." That was evident during Wisconsin’s return to Madison after claiming the share of the conference title on March 7. While holding what appeared to be a digital boombox in his left arm, he greeted fans as Queen’s "We are the Champions" played on way inside the Kohl Center.
"Somebody that obviously doesn't have the spotlight or the recognition that he deserves, but he's just a glue guy really," Trice said on Feb. 13 "Just his speeches before the game are really inspiring actually and really hyped and exciting and it gets us ready, gets us pumped to go out there and play to our best ability. Then he's always dancing in a circle so it just shows his character and his personality."
