UW practiced with the Under Armour ball Thursday, and junior forward Nigel Hayes said he’s trying to get up as many shots with it during his spare time to gain a comfort level heading into a key game for the Badgers.

“It’s definitely different,” Hayes said. “Personally, we don’t like it too much. I don’t like the Under Armour ball whatsoever. But that’s the way this amateur sports league is set up. We’re supposed to be having fun, but all the money is in these basketballs that colleges play with. But it’s an amateur sport, we’re just here for fun. It’s not really that serious. So I guess any ball should be OK.

“Maybe we should have a universal ball like the NBA. You don’t go to the Clippers’ stadium and play with a Nike and then go to Golden State and play with a Rawlings. But in this amateur sport of college, where money isn’t the goal — it’s the student education and experience that you get — we play with a million different basketballs.”

Even though it has had an apparel sponsorship agreement with adidas for the past 15 years, UW has used a Sterling Athletics brand basketball for its home games because former Badgers coach Bo Ryan has a long history with the Washington-based company that dates to his days at UW-Platteville.