ESPN.com features Green Bay women's basketball in recent article

Nothing good lasts forever, or so generations of rock-and-roll poets have assured us. So it is that in Wisconsin-Green Bay's third season under coach Matt Bollant, dissension has stirred the water within the ranks of the formerly tranquil basketball team.

"Overall, I think everyone -- almost everyone, I should say -- in Green Bay are Packers fans," junior Kayla Tetschlag, a native of nearby Sheboygan, explained of the origins of the current strife. "We recently got a few Minnesota and Illinois recruits which, sadly, are Vikings and Bears fans. So now we have a little rivalry going on among the team. But it's all in good fun."

All right, as far as disharmony goes, it's more Osmonds than the Clash. Truth be told, this simply isn't a program that does drama. It's a model of stability on the fringes of the sport's mainstream, a program that never had a losing season since moving to Division I more than 20 years ago and which has made 12 consecutive postseason appearances, including nine NCAA tournaments.

But even in that continued success there is a story. As much credit as coaches get for turning things around at moribund programs, sometimes there's nothing more difficult than keeping a ship sailing steadily on.

Not quite three full seasons removed from a coaching change that at least temporarily brought storm clouds rolling in off Lake Michigan -- or more accurately, the University of Michigan -- UW-Green Bay isn't just keeping its head above water. The current team, arguably the first that truly bears Bollant's stamp, remains undefeated as the new year dawns, a résumé that includes wins against DePaul, Marquette and Wisconsin and the earliest national ranking in program history.

It's a team with all the parts in place to go somewhere the program has never gone before -- the third round of the NCAA tournament. But it's also a team built the same way UW-Green Bay teams have always been built -- with local kids from Wisconsin cities and towns like Sheboygan, De Pere, Hortonville and Francis Creek who take care of the ball, shoot it well and defend even better.