The Wisconsin Badgers fell just short in an entertaining 84-83 loss to the Oklahoma Sooners in an exhibition match last Friday, as they couldn’t complete the comeback in a tight game.
It was a game where Wisconsin played from behind for the most part, but also climbed back to keep things very close in the second half before ultimately falling just short in the loss.
John Blackwell led the way with 20 points, while transfers Nick Boyd and Austin Rapp added 19 and 17 points, respectively. Wisconsin only
shot 43.5 percent from the field and 32.3 percent from deep in comparison to Oklahoma’s 51.8 percent from the field and 55 percent from deep.
Nonetheless, it was still a one-point game at the end, and there was much to take away about the new-look Badgers.
After the game, head coach Greg Gard spoke with reporters, pointing out how valuable of an experience that would be to the team, while noting the importance of getting better on defense.
“That is exactly why we do those things,” Gard said. “To play in this type of environment, and get a lot of things exposed, areas that you can’t maybe learn about as in-depth in practice, and to get to do this and see a team that can challenge you in different ways, I think, is great for us. We will take a jump from this, specifically defensively. I thought we were not good enough there in the first half, but especially on the back half of the second half, I thought we started to get our feet under us a little bit. Some of it is communication, I thought some of it was, like the guys said, being newer to playing with each other. So, just things that we will continue to improve upon as we get more chances to get reps.
“I think what excites me the most about this group is more about what they were not tonight, in terms of they were not good enough on the defensive end specifically. And being more efficient offensively on every possession. That tells me we have a long way to go. But that is the exciting part. We better have a long ways to go in October. That is good. That means the ceiling is high for this group. But, I like what I saw from this group down the stretch, defensively doing some things that we were better with. And, like I said, just things that you can’t just simulate in practice. We need to get more bite and teeth defensively. So, we will learn more from this than the last 10 days of practice. This will help us because we can break things down on film, and really dive into how they see themselves against other competition, and where we made mistakes, and keep moving forward.”
Defensively, the Badgers weren’t great, as Gard mentioned. But, to be in a game where you shoot significantly worse from the field and from deep and only lose by one has to be a good sign for the team.
Wisconsin will figure things out defensively. Gard has always been strong on that side of the ball, and a team with nine new faces and three freshmen in the rotation will take some time to gel together.
But, the offense looked the part on Friday, even without the shooting numbers. Wisconsin still scored 83 points and averaged 1.17 points per possession, despite also only shooting 7 of 19 on layup attempts. The pace was high, and the team got to the free-throw line 18 times, thanks to John Blackwell and Nick Boyd.
Once those gaps start to piece together, the Badgers should be in a serious place to contend this year.
