Wisconsin Basketball: Is this season Greg Gard’s best coaching job?

Greg Gard has been the head coach of the Wisconsin Basketball program for six seasons.

There have been a lot of ups and downs throughout Gard’s Wisconsin tenure, but the administration at the University has never given up on him, even when the program hasn’t been in the brightest of spots. After an offseason of turmoil, due to leaked audio of a team meeting last season, Gard still remained as head coach for this season.

The Badgers have surprised a lot of fans and media with their hot start to the season. With Wisconsin coming out of the gates swinging early on, is this season Greg Gard’s best coaching job at Wisconsin?

The Wisconsin Basketball program’s early success may make this season Greg Gard’s best coaching job

The Wisconsin Badgers are 8-1 this season.

In most years, Wisconsin being 8-1 would not be a surprise to very many people. This is not like most seasons, however.

Many analysts picked Wisconsin to finish in the bottom of the Big Ten Conference. Some even went as far as to say that the team wouldn’t advance to the NCAA Tournament in March. By the looks of things to this point, both of those predictions appear to be false. The Badgers have come out strong in the season’s early stages and appear to be significantly better than the preseason expectations made them out to be.

Greg Gard’s ability to develop players has been brought into question by some Badgers fans throughout his time as the head coach. Look no further than what the Badgers have done so far this season to debunk that claim. A large majority of the team’s rotation players have had very little, if any, college experience prior to this year. But you would never know that based off of how mature the team has looked during the first 9 games.

The emergence of Johnny Davis as a college basketball superstar further cements the case for Gard as it pertains to player development. As a freshman last season, Davis didn’t even start and averaged seven points per game off the bench for the Badgers. This season, he has taken off and has made a case for himself to be considered among college basketball’s elite players. If the sophomore phenom can maintain his current scoring average, he will become the first Badgers player to average 20 PPG in 26 years. Even though a sophomore leap was expected out of Davis by Badgers fans, it’s unlikely that a potential All-American candidate was involved in those expectations.

Another knock that has been placed on Gard is not getting the top in-state recruits. Recent highly-touted recruits in the state of Wisconsin, such as Tyler Herro and Patrick Baldwin Jr. have taken their talents elsewhere to play their collegiate ball. Herro even had initially committed to play for Gard at Wisconsin, but later changed his mind and decided to play for John Calipari at Kentucky instead. Herro has mentioned in tweets that one of the reasons why the state’s top talent commits elsewhere is because they don’t want to play in WIsconsin’s system. After seeing Davis’ development and him thriving in the system that Herro criticized, it is not too late to delete those tweets.

It has been very exciting to see the Badgers exceed expectations in the young season. The Badgers have many young players that will only continue to grow. The next few years of Wisconsin Basketball should be a fun time for fans and hopefully a deep tournament run can come out of it. Greg Gard has proven a lot of his skeptics wrong this season with the outstanding play of his young squad. As Jon Rothstein would say, “Greg Gard. Silent Assassin.”