MADISON, Wis. – The phrase “no rest for the weary” does not apply to the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team.
Walking out of Carver-Hawkeye Arena with a 74-63 win over Iowa on Saturday, Wisconsin went 5-2 during a demanding three-week stretch that included only two home games, flights to the West Coast and East Coast, and two bus trips.
The reward was a week off between games, the Badgers’ only bye week during the 20-game conference season and the longest stretch between games since late December. A time to recover? Yes. A time to rest? Don’t think about it.
“Not satisfied,” head coach Greg Gard said. “That’s what I told them. We aren’t relaxing. This isn’t a time to take a breath … We’ve got an edge established to us. We’ve got to keep it.”
Over the years, Gard and the Badgers (19-5, 9-4 Big Ten) have benefited from the one-game-at-a-time mindset, but it’s hard to ignore what’s coming over the final three weeks of the regular season.
Wisconsin’s next three games are against opponents who combined have spent 32 weeks in the Associated Press poll this season, starting with league-leading Purdue (19-5, 11-2) Saturday afternoon at Mackey Arena.
The Badgers are tied for fourth in the league standings, two games behind the Boilermakers. Wisconsin is 0-4 against teams with a current winning conference record and 9-0 against the rest.
Of Wisconsin’s seven remaining games, three fall into the former category.
“Sit down, watch film, recover, get our bodies right,” sophomore point guard John Blackwell said of the bye-week approach. “Mentally we just got to stay locked in. Sometimes you tend to lose focus when you have this time away from the game, so mentally we just got to be locked in and prepare for Purdue.”
Besides having identical overall records, UW and Purdue are striking similar. Both schools rank in the top 10 of KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency rankings (Purdue is 7th at 123.9 points per 100 possessions, UW is 9th at 123.3), the mid-30s in adjusted defensive efficiency (Purdue is 32nd at 96.6, UW is 37th at 97.6), and the scoring margin between the two is less than a point.
However, while the Boilermakers have reached 90 points in three of their last four wins, Wisconsin has shot less than 40 percent in three of the past five games and not more than 43.3 percent.
UW's offense has shown signs of hesitancy in certain situations, including in Saturday’s first half. The Badgers had six turnovers and five offensive rebounds in 33 possessions and weren’t attacking. Letting Iowa control the game’s tempo, the Badgers only attempted three free throws.
With Gard imploring his team to “compete” at halftime, UW started 4-21 from the field but started racking up fouls. The Badgers were in the bonus for the final 7:12 and scored more points from the line down the stretch (nine) than Iowa had in total points (four).
Purdue has given up 73.2 points in its last five games, while UW’s improving defense is at 65.4 and doing little things to create or dissuade offense.
Steven Crowl overcame a 2-for-7 shooting afternoon to register two of his career-high three steals in the final 5:36. Blackwell missed a contested layup with 2:10 remaining but ripped the rebound away from Iowa forward Ladji Dembele, drew a foul, and went 1-for-2 at the line.
“You have to continue to get better,” Gard said. “You continue to find ways to sharpen us individually and collectively. We’ve got a lot of season left.”
Asked by an Iowa reporter how Wisconsin successfully replaced so many pieces of its rosters, Gard cited retention and chemistry. He pointed to Crowl, Carter Gilmore, Max Klesmit, and Kamari McGee as his roster’s core pieces, Blackwell and Nolan Winter as young foundational pieces, and program players like Chris Hodges and Marcus Ilver who “are here for the right reasons and because they want to be here.”
Most importantly, according to Gard, it’s a group hungry to compete.
“Those things allow that merging that takes place when you bring in new players to happen, and it happened in the right direction,” Gard said. “You can have a lot of talent but if you’re chemically imbalanced, it’s not going to work.
“I've never seen bad chemistry, but I've seen some that's better than others. This one is really good, and that's a credit to our players.”
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