Wisconsin 2019-20 basketball preview: Guards

The 2019-20 men's basketball season starts for the Wisconsin Badgers on Nov. 5 in Sioux Falls against No. 20 Saint Mary's. With less than a week before tipoff, BadgerBlitz.com begins its positional previews in looking at UW's guards.

"We're pretty deep in that area this year," redshirt junior D'Mitrik Trice said about the backcourt on Wednesday. "Last year. we were without Trevor [Anderson]. Now we got more guys stepping in those roles, even Kobe [King] coming to the point a little bit and me moving off the ball.

"Having Trevor back is a big help for this team and having his experience and what he can do with the ball and scoring. I think that helps us a lot."

Wisconsin will have to replace outgoing senior Khalil Iverson, who averaged 6.9 points, 4.5 rebounds, 54.4 percent from the field during the 2018-19 season. While the Badgers' three-point shooting struggled in the second half, the 6-foot-5 Ohio native stepped up in recording double figure scoring totals in seven of the team's final nine games.

This season, UW will have to replace not just his athleticism on the court but the ability to defend.

Coming back from his broken patella injury a year prior, King flashed his potential last season as a redshirt freshman. Though only scoring in double digits four times, he tallied a career-high 14 points against Oklahoma in the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament down in the Bahamas in late November while also throwing up 13 against Michigan State during the Big Ten Tournament in March.

Now with Iverson and All-American Ethan Happ gaving graduated, Wisconsin will need players to step up. King has the skill-set to be a three-level scorer, and his ability to get to the basket and finish will greatly help the program replace two significant players.

Other questions remain about the guard group as a whole, as seen below, but a big one revolves around just how King steps up into a more prominent role on this team in 2019-20. With Trice's comments about the La Crosse, Wis,., native playing the point, that only adds to the intrigue.

"Kobe has developed a whole new asset to his game, I think," Trice said about King's development in that role. "The biggest thing for him is he's attacking the rim a lot more, and he's getting to the free throw line and making plays for others. That's the biggest thing that he's been working on is being aggressive, and it shows at times. Even when we put him on the point, he's finding other guys to get open. He's making the right reads and attacking when he needs to."

Trice ended his 2018-19 campaign at exactly 39 percent from three-point land, though entering the Dec. 8 contest at Marquette he shot 60 percent (granted, there was always going to be some regression to the mean). Pritzl eventually led the Big Ten in three-point shooting during conference (53.5 percent), and Davison hit just under 35 percent from deep.

Wisconsin, as a team, finished last season shooting 35.9 percent from three-point range, but early on it caught fire. Before facing the Golden Eagles, UW shot 41.6 percent. That was admittedly a smaller sample size compared to the rest of the season, but against Oregon in the first round of the NCAA tournament, the Badgers made just 6-of-30 attempts (20 percent) in the 18-point loss. This is not just on the guards, but also forwards Aleem Ford and Nate Reuvers (and Micah Potter, whenever he is eligible to play in games once again).

One other factor to watch for: How UW adjusts to the new three-point line. In June, the NCAA announced that the three-point line would be pushed back to 22' 1.75" for Division I contests.

With Potter's waiver appeal initially denied by the NCAA earlier this month, just how UW compensates if the ruling is not overturned will be interesting. For now, the Ohio State transfer is not eligible to return until the Dec. 21 game against Milwaukee.

While the front court depth takes a significant hit with Potter's absence, there appears to be five game-ready guards for head coach Greg Gard to use at his disposal. There will be obvious differences with each opponent, so matchups will impact how the staff inserts each player, but we may see some smaller lineups when needed.

One of those available guards is Anderson, the former Green Bay Phoenix transfer who suffered a knee injury and was lost for the season after only playing in eight games. Though the overall stats were not robust by any stretch, he showed he could provide a boost to the team as seen in the 79-75 win over N.C. State on Nov. 27 with five points.

During his press conference on Monday, Gard noted the physical and mental components to coming back from an injury like Anderson went through and is coming back from. He mentioned the in-state product was "on somewhat of a pitch count at times" for reps, but the head coach also called out his player -- who wears a brace around his right knee -- was doing the drills that his teammates were doing.

“Then the other thing, obviously seeing in him on Saturday [during the closed scrimmage against Iowa State], it’s been a while since he had played, since the Iowa game last year so just that whole live game atmosphere, those type of things," Gard said. "Part of it mental, part of it’s physical. He’s made great progress. I think he’s probably, if you looked at where we thought he’d be, he’s probably ahead of schedule. But I know in his mind, he’s not where he wants to be.

"He gets frustrated at times, and you have to be patient with that, knowing that it’s going to take awhile. He won’t be back to the original Trevor Anderson, maybe not this year. Those type of injuries sometimes take a while to come back, and a lot of it at the tail end of it is the mental hurdle you have to get over.”