By Colin Donovan and Dan Boucher
Frank Kaminsky should be the Player of the Year, no doubt about it. Coach Bo Ryan is surely one of the best strategic coaches in all of college basketball. But for the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team, individual accolades are meaningless. Nonetheless, this is exactly why Wisconsin is once again poised to make a run to the Final Four in Indianapolis.
Amid an era in college basketball where many teams rely on scoring from one or two key players, the Badgers are dangerous because of their even scoring. Though Kaminsky leads the team with 18.2 points per game, anybody can step up to score at any given time. Sophomore Nigel Hayes and junior Sam Dekker have both improved significantly this year and are capable of scoring outbursts in big games. The other sophomore, Bronson Koenig, has demonstrated what the Wisconsin system prides itself on. With senior starting point guard Traevon Jackson going down with a broken foot in January, Koenig was forced to step into the starter’s role and hasn’t looked back since. Since Jackson’s injury, Koenig has scored 11.3 points per game and has orchestrated the offense with near perfection. Along with their even scoring and discipline, Wisconsin’s experience should be key factor for them as they try to advance in March.
Unlike some of the other perennial powerhouses nowadays, take Kentucky and Duke for example, Wisconsin wins with experienced and proven upperclassmen. Of this year’s core seven-man rotation, Wisconsin plays only two sophomores and one junior, with the other four being weathered senior leaders who know precisely what it takes to win. To put Wisconsin’s experience into perspective, Kentucky starts two freshmen who are joined only by sophomores and juniors, and three of Duke’s five starters are freshmen. While winning with youth has been done in the past, Wisconsin’s experience and veteran leadership put them in a position to succeed.
The experience of Wisconsin’s veterans has led to their precise execution this season. The Badgers average a mere 7.4 turnovers a game, the lowest in all of division 1 college basketball. This is an astonishing feat to say the least going up against stiff competition from the perennial powerhouses of the Big 10 conference. Bo Ryan deserves much of the credit too for his tactic of immediately benching players after they commit turnovers. While this appears to be a harsh punishment, it truly establishes a tough discipline in the players to strive for nothing but the best.
The excellence of the players is not limited to turnovers, the team also shoots 76% from the free throw line with no players averaging below 50%. With attention to detail being a strong suit of the Badgers and a successful 31-3 record in the regular season it is expected that they will make a deep run in the this year’s tournament. The Badgers square off against sixteen seed Coastal Carolina in the first round, tipping off on March 19th. The Chanticleers gave a highly seeded Virginia team a scare last year in the tournament, but given the history of a 16 seed never knocking off a 1 seed, Wisconsin shouldn’t have much to worry about in the first round. As a matter of fact, Wisconsin shouldn’t have much trouble at all in the early rounds with the team they have this year.
As always the tournament should shape out to be a wild ride for the Badgers, whether they get upset early or make a deep run can’t be determined amid the madness, but with the way they’ve played as a team this year, it is very likely that they will be in Indianapolis competing for a championship on April 4th.
