Wisconsin Basketball: Badgers Continue to Boost Resume

Despite being short-handed against No. 14 Michigan State, the Wisconsin Basketball team came away with another resume boosting win over the weekend.

Prior to the Wisconsin Basketball team’s December 21st matchup with UW-Milwaukee, they sat at 5-5 on the season and had lost four of their previous five games. And most of those losses weren’t even that close.

Wisconsin was 0-5 away from the Kohl Center, they were consistently being out-rebounded, and there were games where putting the ball through the bucket looked nearly impossible. With the heart of the Big Ten schedule just around the corner, after making the NCAA Tournament for 19 consecutive seasons, it now looked like the Badgers were on the verge of missing it for the second time in three years.

However, a dominating road win against Tennessee who had been ranked No. 21 in the country the week before these two teams met, was the turning point in the Badgers’ season.

Shortly after on the road against then No. 5 Ohio State, led by Nate Reuvers and Kobe King, Wisconsin would pull off the upset. Just over a week later they would knock off No. 20 Penn State on the road and followed that up with a win at the Kohl Center over then No. 17 Maryland.

And most recently, just this past Saturday without King or Brad Davison, the Badgers came away with an improbable win over No. 14 Michigan State.

Now, my intention isn’t to make it seem like things have been just wonderful over the last five weeks, because that’s far from the case.

Wisconsin would lose a heart-breaker to Illinois, get dominated by Michigan State on the road, they were absolutely bullied by Purdue, and in the final 7 minutes of the Iowa game, the Hawkeyes finished on a 23-5 run to secure the win. And oh yeah, just this past week King decided to leave the program as well.

This is still a team that struggles to rebound, especially on the offensive end, they can go ice-cold when it comes to shooting, and they lack consistent bench scoring outside of Micah Potter. However, in typical Badger fashion they play solid defense, the mid-season addition of the aforementioned Potter has been huge, while Reuvers continues to get even better, and D’Mitrik Trice has been very solid as of late.

Despite their deficiencies and the noise from many Badger fans who want Greg Gard fired, Wisconsin is putting together a solid NCAA Tournament resume. They currently have four top-25 victories, including two on the road, and their 6-5 Big Ten record has them in 7th place at the moment but just two games out of first place.

In fact, even before the Badgers’ win over Michigan State, Joe Lunardi of ESPN had them as the 8 seed in his most recent bracket projection and John Gasaway also of ESPN has Wisconsin in the category of “should be in” when he was discussing the upcoming NCAA Tournament in a recent article.

This Wisconsin Basketball team is far from perfect and they certainly have their flaws. But with that said, a lot of credit needs to be given to Gard and this team for putting together the resume that they have up to this point. And if they can finish out this final month of the regular season on a positive note, it looks like they could very well be NCAA Tournament bound.