INDIANAPOLIS – After a second straight loss cost his team an outright Big Ten championship, Wisconsin senior Brad Davison was asked whether his level of concern was growing with the NCAA Tournament looming just over the horizon.
While the last week has been disconcerting for Davison, his teammates, and the program as a whole, Davison wasn’t willing to publicly press the panic button.
“We're not defined by two games,” he said. “We're more defined by the 30-some games before that we've been there, done that. We've won a lot of close games. We've battled, we've done things the right way and we've had pretty good outcomes throughout the year.”
He’s right, as Wisconsin’s 16 combined Quad 1 and Quad 2 wins is among the best in the country. However, in a quiet locker room following second-seed Wisconsin’s 69-63 loss to seventh-seed Michigan State Friday, Davison was one of the first players who spoke up.
According to freshman guard Chucky Hepburn, the message to the group was simple: get your stuff back together.
“It’s win or go home now,” Hepburn said. “We can’t afford to lose anymore.”
The Badgers (24-7) now must wait until Sunday night to find out their seed, their opponent, and their location from the NCAA Tournament selection committee. Wisconsin is a near lock to be playing in Milwaukee on Friday but likely will be no better than a three seed after an ugly week.
Once having the uncanny ability to bounce back from tough losses, Wisconsin has lost consecutive games for the first time this season. How the losses came were just as disconcerting. The Badgers blew a double-digit lead in the second half to lose to last-place Nebraska at home, costing them the outright Big Ten championship.
On Friday, Wisconsin couldn’t shoot with much efficiency or consistency. The Badgers went 22 of 60 overall (36.7 percent) and 7 of 24 from three-point range (29.2). The Badgers were 11 of 20 on shots around the rim and 12 of 21 from the free-throw line (57.1).
“Just missed shots,” said guard Johnny Davis. “It happens in the game of basketball.”
Wisconsin has been far from an offensive force this season. Shooting 42.5 percent as a team, a number that ranks them 11th in the conference and 262nd nationally, they have largely survived because of Davis, the Big Ten Player of the Year who is trying to be the first UW player to average at least 20 points in a season since Michael Finley in 1994-95.
The last two games are foreshadowing if Davis isn’t at his best. He was held to 12 minutes against Nebraska because of foul trouble and his ankle injury and was out of sync Friday after missing significant practice time this week to let that injured ankle rest. The result was Davis finishing 3-for-19 against a Spartans defense that plugged gaps and threw multiple defenders at him, resulting in forced shots and missed connections.
“You got to see (that someone is struggling) and step up,” forward Tyler Wahl said. “It doesn’t matter if he’s number one of number seven.”
UW has seen Davison pick up the slack with a game-high 23 points against the Spartans, but UW’s top three front-court players – Steven Crowl, Chris Vogt, and Wahl – combined for 18 points Friday, and the offense appeared stagnate during a first half where it shot just 24.1 percent from the floor and averaged a brutal .688 points per possession.
It had a similar look to Sunday, when the Badgers missed their last nine shots and didn’t make a field goal over the final 5:48.
“I got to be a more vocal leader on the court and off the court,” Hepburn said of the responsibilities of his position. “If I can do it, I think our team will be even better.”
Wisconsin has also fallen into the trap of becoming too jump-shot happy when things go askew, costing them its aggressiveness and the ability to draw fouls. Against Nebraska, Wisconsin was in the bonus with 16:18 remaining in the game and in the double bonus at the 13:40 mark. UW drew one foul over the final 13 minutes.
Playing catch up in the second half Friday, the Badgers only went to the line seven times. It didn’t help they missed nine free throw attempts either for the first time in nearly two months.
“That’s not like us,” Wahl said of the missed free throws. “I’d say we’re a pretty good free throw shooting team. That’s an off day. Get in the gym, see the ball go in a few times, and hopefully we’re better this next weekend.”
The problems aren’t one-ended. The Badgers were only down two points at halftime, despite their offense’s woes, against the Spartans because their team defense limited perimeter makes and keep them off the offensive glass. It was a script flip after halftime when they let Michigan State’s Marcus Bingham Jr. establish himself in the low block and be the bully.
Bingham Jr. averages 8.9 points per game, but he scored nine on four straight possessions in the second half. Michigan State ended up scoring points on eight consecutive possessions, building a 56-50 lead with 5:29 to go that UW could never overcome. Bingham Jr. finishes with 19 points and 11 rebounds, helping Michigan State overcome going 1-for-11 from 3-point range.
“We’ve looked really good and really bad these last couple games,” Wahl said. “We know we got it in us. We got to find that and play a solid 40 minutes … That’s the fun of March. You’re never promised anything. Teams can overlook 16 seeds and they lose. Now, it’s just a flip of the switch. We’ve got to flip that in our minds.”
In the previous 12 seasons, only once has Wisconsin not had either its offense or defense rated in the top 30 of KenPom’s adjusted efficiency ratings. That was in 2017-18 when the Badgers missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1998.
This team enters the NCAA Tournament ranked 51st in adjusted offense and 37th in adjusted defense. Wisconsin does rank 10th in luck, but the Badgers are finding out that their luck is running out if they don’t start playing better.
“We look at this as learning opportunities, a lot of things we can do better,” Davison said. “Now we've got some time to rest and recover and fix those things that we don't have -- you know, we sit in a quiet locker room forever again.”
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