Kansasville, Wis. ? Tucked in wind-swept rolling hills of Wisconsin, near Bong Recreational Area and far from Kansas Jayhawks basketball, there is a place called Kansasville.

It’s not a spot dominated by the legendary coach Phog Allen. Kansasville is stomping grounds of eccentric inventor Mario Lena and his flabby, gentle German shepherd dogs.

Eager autograph seekers crowd the edge of the stands at Kohl Center in Madison, Wis., to get Drew Gooden's autograph after a Kansas University practice session. The Jayhawks were preparing Thursday afternoon for their Sweet 16 matchup tonight against Illinois.

This nook of the Badger State doesn’t have a campus hangout named the Hawks Nest. The central gathering spot in Kansasville is a biker bar called the Hogs Nest.

And this Wisconsin locale isn’t populated by thousands of Kansas University graduates. Kansasville has just two KU alums Deanne and Roger Ebner.

“No,” Deanne said, “we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

The Ebners, who graduated from KU in the early 1980s, live with their two children, Benjamin and Khava, so far out in the sticks they’re able on the best of days to pick up only one static-filled television channel out of Milwaukee. And that station, irritatingly, doesn’t show a bit of Jayhawk basketball.

Jane Kelly, 6, a big Kansas fan from Madison, Wis., gets involved watching KU players during a practice session. Kelly on Thursday was at the KU session in Madison with her brother, Jacob, and parents, James Myers and Lisa Kelly, a 1990 KU graduate who grew up in Emporia.

That’s a real problem when KU advances in the NCAA Tournament, as it has for tonight’s Midwest Regional game against Illinois at the Kohl Center in Madison.

“So,” said Roger, who works for Abbott Laboratories across the border in Chicago, “when KU gets into the Sweet 16, I shoot an e-mail to Rich Flanders.”

Flanders, another Abbott researcher and KU graduate, is something of a Jayhawk maniac. To understand that, all you have to do is read the e-mails Flanders sends Roger about KU.

“It’s like taking a drink from a fire hose,” Roger said.

While the family has figured out how to track the Jayhawks, no one in this unincorporated burg seems to know the origin of the name “Kansasville.”

It took a call to reference librarian Nancy Mulhern at the Wisconsin Historical Society Library in Madison to scare up that information.

The area was settled by Capt. John Trowbridge, a sea captain who fought in the War of 1812. He built a three-sided cabin for his family in 1836 on land that is now Kansasville.

Roger and Deanne Ebner, 1981 and '83 Kansas University graduates, are residents of the small southeastern Wisconsin town of Kansasville. Although television reception is sporadic and Kansasville is not a hotbed of Jayhawk mania, the Ebners maintain a healthy interest in KU basketball. Tonight the Jayhawks play a Sweet 16 game against Illinois in nearby Madison, Wis.

It picked up its current designation about 20 years later when an area family moved to Kansas. A drought in the Sunflower State sent them scurrying back to their roots in southeast Wisconsin. For the family’s willingness to come home, the town was dedicated Kansasville.

“That’s what is recorded, be it lore or fact,” Mulhern said.

Nearly 20 years after leaving Lawrence, the Ebners have come to accept the pace of Kansasville, population about 2,900.

“It’s nice here,” Deanne said, “because we’re on a first-name basis with people. It’s a community feeling.”

And there are unappreciated benefits of living in rural Wisconsin.

The Ebners, who graduated from Shawnee Mission South High School and still have relatives in the Kansas City area, know more about the nature of livestock large male cattle, for example than they did while studying education and engineering at KU.

“One day I was on the front porch and I yelled for Roger to look at the size of a cow that wandered into the yard,” Deanne said.

A Jayhawk statue rests on the front counter of the Madison Concourse Hotel, where the KU team and fans are staying. Hotel employees Sarah Job, left, and Jessica Gillette were at the front desk Thursday and said the mascot was courtesy of KU alum Jeanne Doege, who is the human resource director at the hotel.

“I said, ‘Honey, that’s a bull,'” Roger replied.

Regarding KU basketball, however, Roger can tell the difference between a winner and a loser. He’s picking KU to roll into the Final Four in Atlanta.

“If KU comes into the game up, I think they’re unbeatable.”

Stephanie Temple, KUStore.com manager, and granddaughter of former KU baseball coach Floyd Temple, watches over the KU merchandise table Thursday in the lobby of the KU team hotel, the Madison Concourse. A pep rally for KU fans, band and cheerleaders is scheduled for this afternoon at the hotel.