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President Obama meets with Wisconsin basketball team during campaign stop

Barack Obama

President Obama likely won’t need much help winning the youth vote in November’s presidential election, but his decision to meet with the Wisconsin basketball team could very well have secured the votes of 16 young men in the Badger State.

After a Twitter campaign by forward Zach Bohannon and some convenient connections to the Obama campaign, the Wisconsin team was able to score a few minutes with Obama before a campaign stop in Madison this week.

The players only got close to five minutes with Obama (and a shoutout to start his day’s speech at the rally), but the president was able to flex his basketball intelligence, according to Yahoo!.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Bohannon told the site. “He said, ‘Now I’ve got a challenge for you. We all know you guys can win at home. The true test is whether you guys can win on the road.’ We’re like, ‘Holy crap, he knows about our home-court advantage?’”

Obama’s ties to the college game are deep, with brother-in-law Craig Robinson at the head of the Oregon State program. He has also been known to attend games, including the First Four games in Dayton last season with British Prime Minister David Cameron.

As for Bohannon, he aspires to be a politician after basketball and, if his ability to arrange a meeting with the president on short notice is any indication, he might understand the power of social media just as much as the famously savvy Obama campaign.

Daniel Martin is a writer and editor at JohnnyJungle.com, covering St. John’s. You can find him on Twitter:@DanielJMartin_