The Wisconsin Badgers are back on track after an up-and-down start to the season, rattling off four straight wins ahead of their game on Thursday against the Penn State Nittany Lions.
Wisconsin had seen some ugly losses to start the year, including a 28-point blowout against BYU and a 30-point blowout against Nebraska. After some wins to finish the non-conference slate, the Badgers were looking strong through one half against Purdue, trailing by only seven at halftime. That lead quickly ballooned
to 25 points in the second half, and Wisconsin had another uncompetitive effort in its fifth loss of the year.
Since then, though, the Badgers have played some good basketball. They got off to a scorching start against UCLA and held on late in the second half after the Bruins mounted a comeback. They had an amazing second half to knock off No. 2 Michigan on the road by three. They came back from behind against Minnesota after a rough first half, and then managed to hold on with a buzzer-beating three to seal the victory on the road. Then, in their recent win over Rutgers, they used another strong first half to get them a win.
Have the Badgers become tougher as a team as they’ve navigated through murky waters?
“Yeah, it’s come gradually,” Gard said. “I saw it in the second half of the Villanova game. Second half [and] in the overtime, I saw that. The second half of the Purdue game when we were down, we caught it back to single digits. You know, we had it for the UCLA game. The edge to us, too. I mean, even though we had a flagrant foul at the end when Nolan [Winter] didn’t want to give up a layup, that showed a little edge. That’s okay, right? That we’re going to take this scoring on us personal.
“And then I think we’ve had it for the most part since. It’s not always glowing in a hundred watt bulb all the time, but we’re better than where we were. And that’s something you’re constantly chasing and you’re demanding that. And lineups have impacted that a little bit. I think we’ve got our competitors on the floor more consistently together and they’re becoming more comfortable with each other, which in some regards is that small ball lineup. It’s a pretty feisty [group]. So, you know, you can cover up a lot of warts and mistakes when you play hard. And they understand how important that is to any team that wants to be successful. I don’t care what level you’re at, high school, junior high, small college, play hard. You can make a lot of good things happen.”
Looking back at the last two games against Rutgers and Minnesota, where Wisconsin had very different ballgames, but pulled out wins, there was a bit of that fight too.
“I thought first half against Rutgers, we were terrific both ends of the floor,” Gard continued. “Second half, I left here really frustrated and upset with how we had played, and we were not as aggressive as we needed to be. I thought we lost [Harun] Zrno two or three times in screening actions that shouldn’t happen. We got one in transition. One of the little guards got to the rim on us. But I look back at [the game and] Rutgers played a heck of a lot better in the second half and I think probably Rutgers played better than we played poorly. It was just that they were playing and we were both scoring for a stretch there. Defense seemed to be optional for both of us.
“But, I think we got to tighten up some ball screen stuff. We switched coverages in the first half, changed it up and it worked. Both of them worked. We stayed more in the second half, wanting to keep those little guards out of the paint. And it was more the threes that we get stretched out and trying to cover the roll in behind it. Like I said, we lost Zrno in situations we helped off the same side. We played a screen wrong, let him reuse a screen. So just little things. And we also [took a] quick shot, I thought, at least four possessions. We took shots that were highly contested early in the shot clock. I mean, you’re up 25 and you’re just hooping. And we got to snap ourselves out of that mindset that we’re just hooping.
“There’s a strategy to every possession. And so those things we talked about on Sunday…So Sunday we went through the film and broke those things down and talked about how some of those quick shot possessions create a momentum for them. We let them get off the hook by playing eight seconds of defense and we took a bad shot. And yeah, it doesn’t have the impact when you’re up 25, but if it’s a three point game, you’re probably not taking that shot. So just those things. Let’s clean up those things and stay aggressive, but be disciplined in what we’re doing offensively too.”
I think we are seeing Wisconsin play harder and also find lineups that work better with that energy. A small-ball lineup kind of forces a team to do so because they’re undersized. While there’s inherent matchups to exploit offensively, there’s also tougher matchups defensively, and the Badgers are playing harder.
