Wisconsin's Defensive Principles Seeping in for Micah Potter

MADISON, Wis. – Micah Potter knows he’s been through the ringer in his first full season at the University of Wisconsin. Actually, he’s done in twice.

The first instance came in his public battle with the NCAA when he lost his waiver appeal to be immediately eligible this past fall. The second came in trying to unlearn old habits to fit in with Wisconsin’s brand of defense. Both processes took time but at least the latter challenge he’s starting to conquer.

“The system takes time to learn, but at the same time, time allows learning,” Potter said. “It’s been about a month since I’ve been back and I feel a lot more comfortable now just understanding our rules, what our principles are.”

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The slow emergence of Potter has been a welcomed boost for Wisconsin (14-10, 7-6 Big Ten) heading into the home stretch of conference play. Having led UW in scoring twice and rebounds five times in the 14 games he’s played this season, Potter is averaging 9.1 points and 6.0 rebounds while ranking in the top 10 in field goal percentage (52.6 percent, 8th) and 3-point percentage (46.2, 4th) in conference games.

Those numbers are why Potter was viewed as savior of sorts when he became eligible in mid-December, giving the program a second low-post presence next to junior Nate Reuvers. But while he was ready to chip in offensively, Potter was a liability defensively simply because he was behind.

Potter bounced between the rotation and the scout team like a fridge major league baseball player between the minor leagues and the majors during the first few weeks of the season. When going through the appeals process, he’d split reps between the two teams. After an appeal was denied, he’d go back to solely scout-team work. When UW filed another appeal, the bouncing-around process started over again. He couldn’t fully focus on Wisconsin’s defensive principles until he missed the first 10 games of the season.

“We didn’t know what my future was going to be like with the appeals,” Potter said. “There are other guys who had to get reps if I wasn’t going to play who didn’t have reps previously. It was a hard situation to go through. When the uncertainty of the whole situation, it’s hard to make definitive decisions.

“That whole situation was nuts, for lack of a better term.”

Wisconsin’s system doesn’t employ anything crazy but breaking old habits isn’t always easy.

Every team in the country has their general principles – protecting the paint, avoid driving baseline, force them toward your help, help-side defense – but one of the main differences for Potter was the way Ohio State’s guarded ball screens and rotated within the defensive scheme compared to what Wisconsin needed from him.

An example, when Potter was doing ball screens in Columbus, he was asked to extend to make the guard drive sideline to sideline and stay high on the perimeter. At Wisconsin, he does what is called a fly trap or a flat hedge on ball screens.

The Badgers want Potter to stay in line with the big who has set the ball screen, preventing that player from getting behind Potter on his role to the rim to set up an easy lob inside to the paint. Ideally, Potter would soft hedge the screen and then backpedal while his teammate would be the one forcing the ball handler to go sideline-to-sideline. The idea is to attempt a tougher two-point shot instead of getting an easy lob inside, as Wisconsin coaches ask players to stick with the shooters a little longer.

“It just takes time to get used to it,” Potter said. “When you rep one-way hundreds and hundreds, or maybe thousands, of times throughout your time at another place and then you go somewhere and unlearn that, it takes time to get used to the new place.”

With Wisconsin having to face some quick guards in conference play, Potter being a step slow forces his teammates to play catch-up. In the win over Nebraska at the Kohl Center Jan.21, Potter scored eight points on a perfect 3-for-3 shooting in 11 first-half minutes. But when defensive lapses caused easy looks inside, head coach Greg Gard quickly put him on the bench after two second-half minutes and left him there for the remainder of the game.

It served as a reminder that success determines playing time in Wisconsin.

“With our defensive principles, we want to help each other as much as possible,” Potter said. “When you do something that’s out of character for our defense, it makes it harder on other people. Just having a situation with me when I’m still learning the system, it makes it harder on other people, and they have to make up for it … The chemistry you have on defense is the biggest thing, and it takes time to build chemistry in any situation.”

Heading into Saturday’s return matchup against the Huskers (7-17, 2-11), Potter is become less of a liability. On Sunday, with Ohio State having a bigger lineup than when the two teams met in Columbus, Gard played matchups and made the decision to give Potter his first start with the Badgers. Potter responded with nine points and five rebounds in 24 minutes, but it was his work defensively on Kyle Young (4 points, 2-for-3 shooting in 19 minutes) and Kaleb Wesson (8 points, 2-for-11 in 27 minutes) that was a difference maker in UW’s 70-57 victory.

It was a defensive performance that has been the M.O. for Wisconsin for decades, a philosophy Potter is starting to slowly master.

“He’s more consistent in terms of positioning,” Gard said. “It’s one thing to watch it on video or do it practice, but when you’re in the heat of the battle in a game and you have to make split-second decisions and they have to become instinctual, that’s harder. I think he’s becoming more comfortable with that.

“You’ve seen a lot of big guys come through this program. Early, there’s a lot of trial and error and there’s a lot of error at some point in time. You just learn through repetitions and being in those positions. Eventually, you get better and improve. He’s definitely done that.”