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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”