MADISON, Wis. – Greg Gard thought the days of preparing an emergency contact list for nonconference games was over. Yet, two years after college basketball survived playing a truncated season in a pandemic, Wisconsin’s head coach is still having to scramble for opponents.

“And it happened on the exact same day, December 23rd,” Gard said. “How about that?”

From 1990 to 2021, Wisconsin had only two seasons where it had longer than a 10-day layoff in December. It’s now happened to the Badgers in consecutive seasons, both unexpectedly.

Last season, Wisconsin had a game canceled because of an opponent COVID outbreak, quickly scheduled a new opponent, and canceled that game because of an internal COVID outbreak. When UW finally played after a two-week layoff, the Badgers were undermanned and out-of-sync defensively in an 89-85 victory over Illinois State.

This 15-day break – the longest for the program since 1988 – was impacted by Winter Storm Elliott, which caused Grambling State to cancel its December 23rd contest at the Kohl Center. That game was supposed to be UW’s first game since beating Lehigh, 78-56, on December 15 and taking its mandatory week off for semester exams.

The Badgers (9-2) placed several calls to find an opponent, even reportedly placing a call to the Milwaukee Panthers, which had their December 22nd game canceled and were facing an 18-day break between games. But the Panthers had already sent players home to avoid the storm, leading to a dead end.

“(Replacing the game) is still ongoing,” Gard said. “Whether it gets filled or not, I don’t know. It’s going to have to be a perfect fit in a window, and we don’t have many windows. You’re going to be giving up something in preparation, either front end or back end if it does fit.”

The good news is the Badgers are healthy heading into tomorrow night’s nonconference game against Western Michigan (4-8) which will allow them to work on the areas that need to be shored up before conference play resumes Jan.3; things that an extra nonconference game could have helped.

Wisconsin sits fourth in the Big Ten in three-point percentage (37.4 percent) but is 12th in scoring (68.3 ppg) and 13th in field goal percentage (42.3 percent). UW has shot the third-fewest free throws in the league (174) and its 70.1 percentage is ninth in the league. The Badgers have won both of their conference games to this point despite shooting 60.5 percent (23-for-38) from the line.

However, the Badgers – which jumped two spots to No.15 in this week’s Associated Press poll despite being idle – have won games by relying on their defense. UW is allowing 60.8 ppg, which ranks third in the Big Ten and 27th in the nation. In those poor free-throw shooting Big Ten games, the Badgers held Maryland to 38.2 percent and Iowa to 42.2 percent shooting.

Both of those games resulted in Quad 1 wins for the Badgers, which lead the Big Ten with a 5-1 record in Quad 1/2 games.

The Badgers haven’t lost a game coming out of exam break since 1996 (a streak of 25 games) and the Broncos are the weakest opponent on UW’s schedule. Western Michigan is ranked 321st in KenPom’s rankings, 340th in the NCAA NET rankings, and is 1-8 against Division-1 competition.

With the canceled game giving Wisconsin a full five days off around the Christmas holiday, Wisconsin players returned to practice Tuesday and the focus and intensity, according to Gard, have been where it needs to be after a long layoff.

“They’re excited to go back and play again,” Gard said. “They feel they have learned a lot through these first 11 games, and there’s a lot of areas we can better at and we’re going to have to get better at. There’s going to be some adjustment to get back into game mode again, but I think we’ll get through that pretty quickly.

“With the foreign trip (to France in August), we had a long summer,” Gard added. “That’s always one of the concerns as a coach when you take those foreign tours, does that eventually start to catch you as the season wears on? You have a longer summer than normal, and a shorter fall in terms of preparation. It’s a lot more on the workload plate. That five days we got can serve as an advantage for us to refuel the tank and get ready for what’s coming next.”

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