Bruising Big Ten has Badgers in the hunt for a conference title
MADISON, Wis. - What a strange few weeks it has been for No. 19 Wisconsin. Winners of five straight, including two games over ranked teams, the Badgers (16-6, 8-3 Big Ten) are heading into Wednesday night’s game against Minnesota (16-6, 6-5) sitting just one game out of first place in the Big Ten.
Not many people would have believed that was likely after the Badgers dropped three of four conference games in January—a skid that started with a 59-52 loss to the Golden Gophers at the Kohl Center on Jan. 3. But Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue are now locked in a three-way tie for first place after the Wolverines and Spartans both lost games over the weekend, giving the Badgers a prime opportunity to compete for a Big Ten regular season championship over the final few weeks of the season.
That opportunity came about after the Badgers bounced back from their two-week skid with wins over the then-No. 2 Wolverines and then-No. 21 Maryland, with wins against Illinois, Northwestern and Nebraska sandwiched in between. And as the Badgers prepare for their rematch with their border rival Gophers on Wednesday, UW head coach Greg Gard didn’t shy away from saying that he had his eye on a few of the other Big Ten games this weekend while speaking with reporters at Wisconsin’s weekly press conference on Monday.
“As we all know the (Big Ten) race got a little tighter over the weekend,” Gard said during his press conference. “It’s an exciting time. We’re barely halfway through (Big Ten play). It’s gonna be a huge week for us, obviously starting with Wednesday night in Minnesota. We’re looking forward to preparing and playing that one on Wednesday night.”
Gard said that he’s couldn’t at least keep one eye on Michigan’s loss to Iowa and Michigan State’s loss to Indiana over the weekend, but it will be important for the Badgers to remain focused on the challenges they will face against Minnesota at Williams Arena in Minneapolis this week, or else they will risk dropping another game to their archrivals after kicking away a chance to keep their previous winning streak going at the Kohl Center a month ago.
The Badgers started that game by scoring just 14 points in the first half after shooting just 23.1 percent from the field in the first 20 minutes. That ended up coming back to bite the Badgers, who cut Minnesota’s lead down to just two points with just over two minutes to play before coming up short down the stretch. In order to steal a win back from the Gophers on the road this time the Badgers know they need to bring the same intensity on the defensive end that they did in January, as well as show a little more offensive consistency from start to finish—rather than relying on hot shooting in the second half to chop away at a big halftime deficit.
“We’ve been talking a lot about mindset the last few weeks,” sophomore guard Brad Davison said after practice on Monday about how his team’s mindset has changed over the last few weeks.
“I think when you have that energy and that sense of urgency mindset right from the beginning it covers up a lot of mistakes,” Davison said. “If you don’t have a good shooting night your defense will keep you in it. If you don’t rebound well your defense will keep you in it. If you miss your free throws, your defense will keep you in it. So we kind of have that mindset - defense is one thing we can control and energy is one thing we can control. If you play good defense the basketball gods will reward you with shots going in.”
It’s possible that loss to Minnesota—Wisconsin’s first loss in conference play at that point in the season—will have taught the Badgers that they can’t afford to take any Big Ten team lightly if they want to remain near the top of the conference standings. And if they didn’t learn that lesson against the Gophers in early January or in their other Big Ten losses, they need only to look at the teams that handed losses to the conference’s cream of the crop over the weekend to get an idea of what happens when you start looking too far ahead at the other important games on your schedule.
“If you watch progressions of games or how games play out there were several last week that could have gone either way,” Gard said during his press conference. “Penn State could have won at home in that overtime game against Purdue. I don’t think anyone is surprised (at the depth of the Big Ten). You know there’s no “get-well game”.
“Everyone talks about the tough stretch we’re in, we’ve been in a tough stretch since the start of Big Ten play. There’s no relinquishing in your mindset or preparation. They’re all very competitive.”
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John Veldhuis covers Wisconsin football, basketball and recruiting for BadgerBlitz.com on the Rivals.com network. Follow him on Twitter at @JohnVeldhuis.