12/9/2016 basketball Edit

Badgers looking for win over in-state rival Marquette

John Veldhuis • BadgerBlitz

Senior Writer

John Veldhuis has covered Wisconsin football, basketball and recruiting for BadgerBlitz.com on the Rivals.com network since 2012.

MADISON, Wis. – Wisconsin senior forward Nigel Hayes did not mince words when asked about what he remembered from UW’s 57-55 loss last season to in-state rival Marquette, which came right after their first loss to UW-Milwaukee in years.

“We just weren’t a good team, plain and simple,” Hayes said Thursday after practice. “They didn’t really do anything that we didn’t know they were going to do. We were right there (but) we were a bad team early in the season.”

The Badgers didn’t know it at the time, but they were just three days away from the abrupt retirement of then-head coach Bo Ryan, who announced his decision the following Tuesday after a 64-49 win over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

Nearly a year later, the No. 17 Badgers (8-2) feel like they have more of an identity now than they did last year when they welcomed the Golden Eagles to Madison, especially after they returned all of their key contributors from last season – both starters and bench players.

That continuity has helped the Badgers figure out who they are and what they can do – at least more so than at this time last year.

“We didn’t really have an identity at that time. It was early,” senior point guard Bronson Koenig said Thursday when asked if he agreed with Hayes’ assessment of last year’s team. “I think we held the ball a lot, we did a lot of one-on-one. We didn’t really move the ball.”

The results speak for themselves, at least in the box score. Through ten games last year the Badgers were shooting just 41.5 percent from the floor (including 32.2 percent from behind the 3-point line) – this year it’s 47.8 percent from the floor and 34.4 percent from behind the arc.

They still have work to do, to be sure. The Badgers are shooting a paltry (for them, at least) 66.1 percent from the free throw line, and the offense has been too sloppy at times - they’re averaging 12 turnovers per game, and just 1.2 assists per turnover.

Still, at this time around the Badgers know what they want to do – and what they can still work on.

“I think we’ve got our identity down, now it’s just a matter of going out and doing it,” Koenig said.

The question now will be if they can turn that identity in to consistency, and consistency in to a win over the Golden Eagles when they tip off on Saturday at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee.

“We want to have that pride of being the best team in the state,” senior guard Zak Showalter said Thursday. “Last year obviously (we) slipped in a couple of in-state games and we don’t want that to happen this year.”

John Veldhuis covers Wisconsin football, basketball and recruiting for BadgerBlitz.com on the Rivals.com network. Follow him on Twitter at @JohnVeldhuis.