The Wisconsin Badgers had a humiliating 90-60 loss to the No. 23 Nebraska Cornhuskers on Wednesday in a game that was close through the first 15 minutes before the latter blew it open.
Wisconsin really
struggled defensively, and it felt like their effort was much lower than usual, as they had the worst loss of the Greg Gard era.
After the game, the head coach was not pleased, pointing out the defensive effort and the lack of an identity on that side of the court.
“We don’t have a defensive identity. We haven’t had one all year. So, we’ll search to find one, and I’ll find guys that want to play defense.”
How exactly will Gard do that?
“Sit guys on the bench. They’ll find out in the next nine days. We haven’t had a defensive identity all year, and everybody gets all rah rah about our offense, but it’s the other end of the floor that’s caused us the trouble for the most part. And obviously tonight it was, you know, credit to Nebraska. They beat us every way possible. There’s not another facet in the game of basketball that they couldn’t kick our rear end with. They did it all.”
Wisconsin has already done that, benching Austin Rapp for Aleksas Bieliauskas, which has seemed to be a good move early on.
There were some better moments, particularly when Hayden Jones was on the court for the Badgers at the end, but it was an ugly turnaround at the end of the first half for the Badgers.
“Maybe there at the end, I thought we had some better defensive possessions,” Gard said. “Hayden Jones was in the game. He did what we wanted him to do and handle screens. So I’ll watch the film and really evaluate it from then. But there wasn’t.
“We started well, but then offensively, specifically, I thought we were doing some good things early, and then we went completely away, what was treating us really well, and took bad shots, put them in transition, put them. Let Sandfort get loose for some threes. Then we get back cut right away. Hoiberg gets a wide-open three. Just consistent mistakes that we’ve got nine days here to work on things.”
While this might be more of the more talented teams Greg Gard has had, there surely is quite a bit to figure out. Wisconsin gets a nine-day break before its next game next Friday against Butler in Indianapolis. We’ll see how much they change going into that one.
