Wisconsin Basketball: 3 Areas to Improve Upon Moving Forward

The Wisconsin Basketball team has had a lot more success as of late, but to continue improving, these are three areas that need to get better moving forward.

It was a really rough start to the season for the Wisconsin Basketball team. Although they won four straight games at one point, they followed it up with a three game losing streak that including some abysmal performances. Before they knew it, they were 10 games into the season sitting at 5-5.

However, to their credit, things turned around for them very quickly and it is no coincidence that it happened after Micah Potter made his debut. Since then they’ve won three road games after starting 0-5 away from the Kohl Center and have notched three top-25 wins as well. Not to mention that their 4-3 Big Ten record is currently tied for fourth place in the standings.

Yet, even though they have already made quite a bit of progress, as we saw during their game against Michigan State, there is still work to be done if they hope to make a run in the Big Ten Tournament and earn an NCAA tournament berth.

As we begin to look ahead to the remainder of the season, these are three areas, in particular, that the Wisconsin Basketball team needs to improve upon moving forward.

Rebounding

This is an area that has already began to improve since Micah Potter joined the team, but against most teams, overall they still struggle. When it comes to offensive rebounds, Wisconsin is last in the Big Ten but they are better on the defensive end. Once again, a credit to Potter. But overall their rebounding margin of +1.4 is 11th in the Big Ten and their 33.8 rebounds per game ranks 237th nationally.

It’s no secret that good rebounding is key to being a successful basketball team at any level. On offense it creates more scoring opportunities as well as chances to get to the free throw line. And defensively, it limits opponents to just one shot attempt.

In order to have a chance against the Michigan State type teams, being more physical and grabbing any extra rebounds will go a long ways towards coming away with wins in those matchups.

Field Goal Percentage

This is a no-brainer, if you want to win games you need to hit more buckets. And this has been a real issue for the Badgers this season. Their overall field goal percentage of 43 percent ranks 10th in the Big Ten, and this includes six games where they’ve shot under 39 percent.

We’ve also seen six games where they’ve scored less than 60 total points, and of those six games, in four of them they’ve scored 55 or less. While their solid defense and slower play limits scoring opportunities for their opponents, it still isn’t easy to win scoring less than 60 points – although they have found ways.

This isn’t a team without a lot of great shooters, so Greg Gard and Company needs to find ways to create easier scoring chances for them.

Free Throw Attempts

As I just mentioned, with Wisconsin playing at a slower pace with only 65.5 possessions per game which ranks 349th nationally, naturally, they will have fewer opportunities to create free throw attempts. With that said, for a team that struggles to make baskets they need to find ways to the free throw line to put up easy points.

This season the Badgers average 15.8 free throw attempts per game which ranks 296th in the country. The good news is that if they can find a way to get three, four or even five more attempts per game – I know that is probably asking a lot – they are a much better free throw shooting team this year as they lead the Big Ten in free throw percentage. Meaning, they’ll more than likely take advantage of those additional opportunities.

However, it all starts with getting the likes of Micah Potter, Nate Reuvers, and others to the line more frequently.