The Wisconsin Badgers are just days away from the season opener against Campbell, with tip-off scheduled for 7:00 p.m. at the Kohl Center on Monday.
Ahead of the regular season, Wisconsin had two preseason games, losing 84-83 to the Oklahoma Sooners before beating the UW-Platteville Pioneers 69-53 on Wednesday.
In the second game, the Badgers won comfortably, but the game was closer than expected for the first 30 minutes as Wisconsin didn’t get into a rhythm offensively.
Wisconsin shot only 6/25 from
three, but it was the 15 turnovers that were a glaring issue. What did head coach Greg Gard attribute the turnovers to?
“I think part of [the issue] is some of the guys are young, getting used to playing together more, and getting more accustomed, working to get that synergy developed,” Gard said about the turnovers. “Some of it was also some fundamental things, of playing too fast in the moment or when we did attack, not playing off of two feet, not being strong with the ball, things that are correctable. A couple of them are on me too, because I went with the smaller lineup at one point with Blackwell at the 4, and we hadn’t really done that, and we had one fly out of bounds. Everybody didn’t know where we were. We were out of sorts on that one offensively. But, we will dissect all 15 of them. I know one was an illegal screen. That [one], wrong place, and shouldn’t have been there.
“But, understanding I think, the attention to detail that we demand all the time, and that is something that, as players get more entrenched in our program, they understand that you’re not going to shoot 18/25 from three every night. There is gonna be a 6/25 night, there might be a 3/25 type of night, but if you defend, rebound, and take care of the ball, it will give you a chance. So, the turnovers we will break down, but I was happy with how we turned up the defensive pressure late in the first half, and then I finally found the combination that was connected and together enough in terms of covering up for each other in the back half, that we were able to get enough stops.”
Turnovers have rarely been a regular issue for Gard’s teams, so I think the issue has primarily been players still figuring out how to play with each other. But, Wednesday’s exhibition showed that Wisconsin has a good amount of potential, but still has a lot of work to do on both sides of the ball.
