MADISON, Wis. – Up by 11 with six minutes to play at the Kohl Center, Wisconsin looked well on its way to a sixth straight win and continuing its late-season surge toward the top of the conference. The problem was the Badgers forgot regulation was 40 minutes long.
Oregon closing on a 16-2 run and making the critical plays in overtime for a 77-73 victory Saturday afternoon muddied the waters for the Badgers with two weeks remaining in the regular season. Instead of being on the doorstep of controlling its own path to a Big Ten regular season championship, Wisconsin will need to win its final four games – starting with tomorrow night’s home game against struggling Washington – and get some help to earn a piece of the conference title.
Saturday’s loss to Oregon has also brought the Badgers back to the pack in the race for a double bye in next month’s Big Ten Tournament, as Maryland and UCLA are tied with UW in the win column and hold the tiebreaker based on head-to-head victories.
Did the Ducks expose something that could prove problematic over the final stretch of the season? What things do the Badgers need to improve on to avoid a season-ending loss? What would label this season as a success?
BadgerBlitz.com talked with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel beat reporter Mark Stewart to get his perspective on where Wisconsin sits three weeks before Selection Sunday.
BadgerBlitz: This team was having a great February, putting themselves in the mix for a Big Ten title, a double bye in the Big Ten Tournament, and getting a high seed in Milwaukee for the NCAA Tournament. We’ll see whether Saturday’s loss to Oregon changes that, but what are your takeaways from how Wisconsin has played as of late?
Mark Stewart: If you go back to where this team was last year and falling apart during this stage of the season, I think they are in a pretty good spot. This was their first loss in February. Oregon is a team that is probably a little better than its 8-8 record in the Big Ten. They look pretty tough. They look pretty long defensively from what I saw. It’s that time of year when teams start coming together. I think these last two weeks of the Big Ten, we’re going to see a lot of this stuff with teams rising up and getting key wins, jockeying for seeding to make sure they get to the tournament. You don’t want to lose at home, but I do still feel pretty good about this team.
I kept watching them Saturday and I was just thinking that somebody was going to make a play. That’s how they have been built. It wasn’t John Tonje’s day, but I was thinking someone else was going to make a play. I still think this group has that. They say coaches don’t like to lose but a loss refocuses or remotivates everybody. I don’t think the loss was a lack of focus. Sometimes you run into a team that got it going, and Oregon wore UW down those last eight minutes.
BadgerBlitz: Did Oregon expose something that should be of concern the rest of the season or was it just a bad offensive day for Wisconsin, which we have seen sporadically this season?
Stewart: The whole thing about dealing with pressure will be interesting, but a team has to have the components to do that. Does the team have a guy like T.J. Bamba who can defend like that and have a big in the post to protect the rim like Oregon does. Michigan is a unique team, too, with what they have with the two bigs. I thought about that. Was something exposed here or was it a matter of correcting?
A lot of the turnovers were flukey situations. For people who watched the game, if John Blackwell with 18 seconds left catches that inbounds pass, he likely gets fouled, goes to the free-throw line, and percentages say he’ll make at least one. Then they are up four points. He misses the ball, it goes out of bounds, Oregon gets the ball on its end, and Shelstad hits the three.
If you watched the Iowa game, there was a point where Shelstad had this long three-pointer waved off at the end of the shot clock. I was thinking as soon as Shelstad got the ball, this dude is not going to give up the ball. To his credit, he splashed it.
A lot of those flukey turnovers, especially the ones Crowl had, I don’t see happening again. However, if Gard wanted some teaching points, he got a lot of them.
BadgerBlitz: There have been so many great individual performances this month from the scoring tear Tonje has been on, the way Crowl has contributed in multiple areas, and the lifts off the bench from Carter Gilmore and Jack Janicki. Has there been one player who has impressed you or surprised you with their play as of late?
Stewart: Watching Gilly James do his thing is fun. A lot of his highlights have been threes and blowing kisses to the crowd but the last couple games he’s made some nice moves in the post and finished down there. He’s been one that jumps out.
Blackwell hasn’t had those huge games, and Saturday wasn’t a great day for him, but what I like about him is that he’s been very steady up to this point in the year. Max Klesmit’s shooting percentages haven’t been what they’ve been in the past, but he is one of those gamer guys. He’s the one guy this year from an offensive standpoint that hasn’t had his run of three-or-four straight games where he’s shot the lights out. I still think he’s got that coming, which could be good news for UW.
BadgerBlitz: Where is one area on offense and one area on defense where Wisconsin needs to grow to be a factor in March?
Stewart: Offensively they’ve done such great work from three-point range. When I look at Nolan Winter working in the post, he’s made more plays down there, but that could be an area where UW can be more productive. Steven Crowl had a nice first half, but he wasn’t as active or aggressive once Nate Bittle got back in the game. We are nitpicking at one of the best offenses in the country, but they could probably get more from the post when they need it.
Defensively, that’s a good question. I don’t know if it’s an area of weakness but just continuing to be that cohesive unit. That’s the one thing I like about them defensively is you can sit back and see the pieces move. When Crowl comes up and helps on a screen, you look behind him and see Gilmore or Xavier Amos helping on his guy and quickly shift when Crowl moves back. There is this synergy they have going when they are playing well defensively. That’s the key to the group because I don’t think there’s one great individual defender. That’s not the way they do it. They do it as a group defensively.
BadgerBlitz: No matter what Wisconsin has accomplished thus far and how they’ve defied the low expectations placed on them, some fans won’t see this season as successful without at least two wins in the NCAA Tournament. In your eyes, is this season already a success or do they need to do more for Mark Stewart to walk away saying it was a successful year?
Stewart: They’ve pushed the bar. I think by this time people have forgotten that they were picked 12th. It’s more this is the team that has been ranked No.11 twice this year. I saw at some website they were listed as a No.2 seed in the tournament. That feels a little high to me right now, but they can get that if they continue to play how they have been playing.
If they got to the second weekend, it would be a really good year considering what they lost and what the expectations were for the group. Once you get to the second weekend, anything can happen. You win that one game, you’re one hot half or one great moment away from the Final Four.
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