ON A RECENT Friday morning inside Wisconsin's 2,300-square-foot weight room, Kaminsky is working to manufacture those gifts in a way that suggests he's not working at all. Heavy bass rattles the hallway windows. Kaminsky and 15 of his closest friends are singing and dancing -- quite badly. The song? Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It." The friendly-fire trash-talk? Unprintable but hilarious. No one seems bothered that it's 7 a.m. "If we weren't as tight-knit a group as we are," Ryan likes to say, "Frank probably wouldn't have come back."

"I don't like to think about my last day of college. It will never be the same." - Frank Kaminsky

But he did -- and to hang with Joe College in his natural habitat is to understand why. These days, if something approaching boredom strikes, Kaminsky will invite himself into the living room of guard Josh Gasser or forward Sam Dekker. ("Everyone on the team knows that if you want to just show up at one of our apartments," he says, "no one's going to care.") Other nights the Badgers grab takeout and retreat to the recliners outside their locker room in the Kohl Center. Or they play table tennis. Or they play video games -- Kaminsky and Dukan ritualistically take a PlayStation on the road for bouts of FIFA -- and occasionally devastate living rooms in the process. Kaminsky and Smith say they received precisely $9 back on their apartment's $3,400 security deposit last year, in part because of the former's tendency to chuck pillows at the blinds after losing in FIFA. A $3,391 habit -- but apparently worth the price. "When I got to college, I was like, 'I can have two friends and do nothing, or I can make as many friends as I want,' " Kaminsky says. The magic of Madison was that he could start from scratch.

So there, this offseason, was Kaminsky flashing the Dirty Dub with Scott Van Pelt after a lunch at Madison's Dotty Dumpling's Dowry. And the dance party that broke out in the locker room to Kesha's "Die Young" after the Badgers beat Michigan in 2013? That was his doing too. And that rumbling noise emanating from the other side of campus? Of course it's Kaminsky, zipping around on a used Yamaha moped that he bought off Craigslist for $1,000 cash -- his graduation money -- then christened with the nom de scooter of Jody. Says Dukan, "The thing sounds like it's farting."

Now imagine: If you could be Frank the Tank, all 84 inches of goofball joy zipping around campus on a farting moped for one more year, wouldn't you? And wouldn't the corporate grind of the NBA sound just a little, well, boring?

WHICH BRINGS US back to the blog heard round the world and the irony of a UW player accusing the NBA of tedium. When sports fans decry the aesthetics of the college game -- how plodding, how earthbound, how points-barren it is -- the piñata they're whacking at is typically Badger-shaped. But the least boring man in college basketball begs to differ. "I wouldn't call our system boring," Kaminsky says. "Just ... less than exciting. We have a proven system, and so long as we're winning games, it's fun for us."

OK, sure. Wisconsin's average adjusted tempo ranking under Bo Ryan is 304th in the country. And yes, that sounds monotonous -- until you consider the Badgers have also made 13 consecutive NCAA tournaments and six trips to the Sweet 16. "We've also led the nation twice as the No. 1 defensive team," says Ryan, "and we've been [No. 3] in offensive efficiency. We're good in a lot of the right stuff."

Ask Kaminsky to define that stuff and he'll call it a system predicated on the patient execution of basic skills -- cutting, screening, spacing, passing -- to unearth the best shot. He'll explain how each player is expected to post up, maximizing mismatches closest to the rim, and describe how every man must continually move the ball, exhausting the opponent's defense. He'll talk of how the Badgers, who aspire to make more free throws than their opponents attempt, are ultimately seeking to approximate a hybrid of the Spurs' efficiency and a medieval vise.

Then he'll tell you this story: On Feb. 16, Kaminsky had 25 points and 11 boards in a 75-62 win over Michigan, the Badgers limiting the Wolverines to 19 first-half points. Five months later, when he ran into two UM players at the Adidas Nations camp in Las Vegas, "all they talked about was how we just ran the clock down and then hit a 3. And that's when I knew we were in their head. They're thinking about having to play defense for 35 seconds every single time."

Wisconsin's is an offense designed to play four out -- one post player surrounded by four 3-point shooters. And within that system, Kaminsky has become both its greatest enabler and greatest beneficiary. In the fourth game last season, against North Dakota, he shattered the Badgers' single-game scoring record, netting 43 points, shooting 16-of-19. His final season line -- 13.9 points, 6.3 boards and 1.7 blocks per game -- was good for first-team All-Big Ten honors. According to a statistical database maintained by ESPN's Kevin Pelton, no 7-footer in the past decade has even sniffed Kaminsky's true shooting percentage, which takes into account both 3-pointers (he shot 37.8 percent) and free throws (76.5 percent). "Frank has developed as much as anyone we've ever had," Ryan says. "Try guarding him now: He has counters to whatever the defense does."

And he'll need them. Kaminsky's challenge this season will be his success. The college game's unlikeliest star is now a marked man, forced to pre-empt the double- and triple-teams that will be sent his way every game. And he's already seen a preview. In the national semifinal, the game after he demolished Arizona, Kentucky threw wave upon wave of bodies at Kaminsky until he eventually succumbed to the onrushing blue tide. The fulcrum of Wisconsin's swing offense scored a mere eight points on 4-of-7 shooting in a 74-73 loss. "We were right there with them, until the end," he says. That's the part that haunts him still.