It’s been a rough start to the season for the Wisconsin Badgers, who are off to their worst start since the 2019-20 season at 7-4. The latest blow was a 76-66 overtime loss to the Villanova Wildcats, where
the Badgers had a poor first half, a great second half, and an ugly overtime period.
It was a different type of game for Wisconsin, as head coach Greg Gard rode the starters hard, not showing much confidence in his bench, which only produced two points in the game.
Gard noted that he’s found a group of five to six players that is meeting the standard the program is looking for. Everyone else, though, has to rise to that standard.
“I think it’s a combination of [many] things, understanding what the standard is,” Gard said about the team’s lack of consistency. “And as I told them in the locker room, now you’ve seen it. We’re not chasing a ghost anymore. We know what it looks like, and I also know you can do it. So now it’s a matter of doing it again. It’ll be again tomorrow when we practice and get ready for Monday. So it’s do it again and then do it again. And I thought we made some steps defensively in practice over the week, things that we worked on. And it showed me in the second 20 that, ‘okay, we’re capable of doing it.’
“Maybe not everybody is yet, but I found a group there of five or six guys that lived up to the standard, and now we gotta get others to live up to that standard, too. So, I don’t lower the standard to meet where they are. They have to improve to meet where the standard needs to be for this program.”
Coming into the year, Wisconsin was thought to have a deep team again, but they were going to rely on a group of transfers and freshmen. So far, that group hasn’t lived up to expectations. The freshmen, apart from forward Aleksas Bieliauskas, look a little green, and other bench pieces haven’t taken that next step.
That’s led to a much different start than anticipated for the Badgers, who have seen big issues on both sides of the ball. We’ll see what changes are made as Wisconsin closes out their non-conference schedule, but it’s been a disappointing start to the season.
