Badgers @ Spartans

Bucky will get crushed unfortunately.

Unless someone gets hot from the three point line this might not turn out well.

Defense and rebounds, defense and rebounds, defensed and rebounds.

when this team's head is right it is defense and rebounds whether ahead by 20 or 2 ... the other day they never had their defensive head in the game even when they were scoring early. and it starts at the PG position for a Bo Ryan team.

jmo.

While they may not win I think they will play well. After every loss this year they came back and played very well the next game except for one. That one would be the home game vs. MSU after the Iowa loss. Bo will have them ready.

What's up with Berggren? He looks lost out there (at least on offense)

This game could get away here pretty quick.

Really? Bruesewitz from 3 is what we get out of a timeout?

Bruesewitz with a terrible decision to shoot with 8 seconds left on shot clock. Inexcusable at the end of the half.

Pat Forde ‏@YahooForde Wisconsin rounding into postseason offensive form: 38 points in last two halves of play.

Ouch babe...

Brusewitz is a glue guy. Not a guy you want posting up.

Dekker just isn't strong enough to play a physical defensive team like MSU.

This is ugly.

Brutal. Just brutal.

The Badgers started the Purdue game shooting 14 of 23. Since then they've gone 16 for 65.

Can a team get demoted to the NIT based on one game?

what a wretched offensive performance. Worst ball handling I've seen all year.

Does bucky ever have to play another game on ESPN? ... Seems like they sh?t the bed every time they do.

Never dreamed they would play this bad. Time to regroup and get ready for both tourneys.

It's really unfortunate, but Forde's comment is accurate. Earlier in the season they were getting someone to step up to get them out of the offensive funk. Now they're all just caving at the same time. Every possession has an air of deperate on to it. They are succumbing to the pressure of March basketball.

Unless they say "f-it" and just play, they could clang their way out of the first round of both the big ten and NCAA tourneys.

Or they could go to the final four.

Definitely one of the two...

They shot 29% from the field and turned the ball over 16 times. Michigan State is no joke but I doubt they would have beaten UW Milwaukee playing that poorly so it's not a surprise they got boat raced by MSU.

After the Purdue game I expected they'd bounce back but they actually played worse against the Spartans and this is not the way you want to tune up for tournament play.

Their 3pt shooting is absolutely in the tank right now and the only consistent guy from the outside seems to be Dekker. Berggren has lost all confidence in his shot, and IMO Bruiser has no business shooting from there anyway.

Need to really turn things around or it could very well be a one and done in the NCAAs. Given their record they will probably have a tough game right out of the gate.

Lots and lots of bricks.

Very physical game, with sparty doing the "reach in" thing over and over. In a lot of games, there would have been a lot of fouls called. But it was called evenly and consistantly, so this one is on Bucky for not adjusting to how the game was being called.

Got to hand it to Bo....he saw the O bogging down, he was able to see that the old run the clock down to a few precious seconds without looking at the basket and having Bruiser toss up a bad 3 was not working. He astutly called a time out and and drew up an adjsutment. What was it? Toss the ball around without looking at the basket for about 30 seconds and have Bruiser toss one up.

Has this guy ever made an adjustemnt? Ever tried anything different? I am obviously not a BB genius, but don't you have to try something? Well into the second game in a row with long scoring droughts and terrible, inefficient offense and he's got nothing to offer?

When is Bo going to recruit some offensive talent?

Offensive ineptness is a pattern with Bo's Badgers. It has always been that way.

I am sure part of the issue is talent level and wonder if it is also the scheme.

I don't know how many times when The Badger's offense is not clicking that what happens is a bunch of perimeter passing that really doesn't seem to accomplish a thing followed by a low percentage near-desperation three with little time left on the clock. It's like they are unable to even get a decent shot.

It has always been that way. Pretty much anyway. (The team that narrowly lost to UNC in the tournament was far too talented for the above to apply and was an exception.)

Whats wrong with the scheme when guys like Bohannon, Evans and Berggren are missing 3 foot bunnies?
Holy mother of god, in the first half we could of been out ahead because the Defense was right there.

I tend to go with El-ka-bong, we never did adjust and played tentative the whole night on offense and Izzo's boys came right at them on every possession on both ends.

These seniors are really offensively challenged. I will not be sad to see Evans go, that guy has cost this team so many offensive points this season, its not funny. There is no way he is ahead in the +/- columns. Bruiser is not far behind but he doesn't pretend to be a scoring forward and Berggren has disappointed on the offensive end.

quote:

Originally posted by Pikes Peak:
Got to hand it to Bo....he saw the O bogging down, he was able to see that the old run the clock down to a few precious seconds without looking at the basket and having Bruiser toss up a bad 3 was not working. He astutly called a time out and and drew up an adjsutment. What was it? Toss the ball around without looking at the basket for about 30 seconds and have Bruiser toss one up.

Has this guy ever made an adjustemnt? Ever tried anything different? I am obviously not a BB genius, but don't you have to try something? Well into the second game in a row with long scoring droughts and terrible, inefficient offense and he's got nothing to offer?

It took a long time, but it appeared that late in the second half Bo drew up a play out of a timeout in which Brust and then Dekker sequentially came off a double high post screen and cut to the basket. This resulted in Dekker getting a layup (which were the first points in about 9 minutes).

Ideally, Brust and Dekker should be the guys getting set up for shots. Bruesewitz shouldn't shoot unless it's a layup, same thing with Jackson.

Ryan's system gets decent shots if the other team isn't committed to playing defense hard the whole game. That's why they can give some of the good, athletic teams tough games. Indiana has a couple of guys that might be NBA lottery picks. Those types of guys often save their energy for the offensive end. Same thing with the big freshman from Purdue who did nothing. When Purdue brought in the backup center that's when the game turned, because he was willing to play defense. Izzo demands toughness and defense. It's not a good matchup for Wisconsin if the other team has better athletes (which is usually the case) who aren't afraid to do the hard work (which isn't often the case).

They missed a lot of open shots. The system gets you looks but they have to make them.

But they do lack a shot creator. The G problem has really emerged this week- they can't handle the pressure, and really that's all Purdue and MSU did.

Ryan's gotta coach these young Gs again. The only seniors are forwards. It they're going to recover from this tailspin, it'll be the Gs that do it. Everything else is in place.

quote:

Originally posted by phaedrus:
Offensive ineptness is a pattern with Bo's Badgers. It has always been that way.

this is incredibly wrong (Offensive Efficiency/Rank in the Big Ten)

2003: 108.2 (1st)
2004: 112.2 (3rd)
2005: 107.6 (3rd)
2006: 104.2 (5th)
2007: 107.5 (3rd)
2008: 109.8 (1st)
2009: 109.3 (1st)
2010: 110.4 (1st)
2011: 119.9 (1st)
2012: 103.0 (8th)
2013: 97.1 (9th)

Difficult to be more wrong on a subject.

I don't know... How is it wrong? The dreaded scoring drought has been that bubgaboo that follows Ryan's program at WI. This year it has been a lot worse than most though...

Offensive efficiency = points/possession? What is the metric?

# points/# of possessions.

An inept team would not be able to convert on possessions. Bucky has been in the top half of the conference (those were conf stats, forget to mention that) 9 of the past 11 years, top in the conf 5 of those times. It is a tempo free statistic, so pace is not an issue. To say ineptitude on offense has been a consistent and persistent problem is dead wrong.

It would be interesting to see what the offensive efficiency ranking would be this year if instead of 62% free throw shooting, they shot even 72%. A few years ago they were over 80%. A team that limits the number of possessions via controlling tempo has to make their free throws.

quote:

Difficult to be more wrong on a subject.

Just a case where what I said could be an occurrence all the while in many cases, the overall offensive performance can even be really good.

I would bet anything that some of the NCAA tournament exits were games where the offense was sometimes inept to an astonishing degree all the while it occurred in one of the years the Badgers ranked Top 3.

Another thing about your stat is how it COULD be skewed by exceptional offensive numbers against weak teams that more than compensated for such occurrences against the strongest teams -and- perhaps practically all such occurrences were isolated to the very strong teams.

In 100% of the tournament losses, Bucky was outscored by the opponent.

You are still wrong about consistent offensive ineptitude.

quote:

Originally posted by phaedrus:
Another thing about your stat is how it COULD be skewed by exceptional offensive numbers against weak teams that more than compensated for such occurrences against the strongest teams -and- perhaps practically all such occurrences were isolated to the very strong teams.

potentially, if you are assuming that big ten teams don't play each other in conference games.

If you keep cupcakes from non conf in the forumla, it isn't much different.

link

Just because Wisconsin opperates at a consistantly slow pace, doesn't mean they are bad offensively. That is in part why so many teams who score more points per game than Bucky have lost to Bucky.

And no doubt part of that 9th OE ranking is because both point guards were basically thrown to the wolvesand learn how to play in the Big Ten. Having Josh Gasser available may have bumpe up that OE ranking and led to a couple more conference wins, the MSU and Purdont games at the Kohl Center.

Hey El Ka,

If I play devil's advocate against myself, maybe it was isolated to just 1 or 2 games and (as such) my criticism is exaggerated.

I don't know if I have the wherewithal to bother to investigate and support, but I am pretty sure that at least in tourney time, there have been occasions where good ol' Bucky would go nearly scoreless for up to 8-10m stretches at times and my reaction was severe!

I don't know what "nearly scoreless is," but I would guess your memory is failing you again and you are exaggerating how you remember things.

I could find a scoreless period of almost 6 minutes vs Butler in '11. Another 6 minutes vs. Cornell in '10.

Now, 6 minutes is a long time to go without scoring in a game, but like saying that the offense has been inept for the past 10 years, saying they go 8/10 minutes (nearly) scoreless sounds like a fans overreaction.

In your research how many 3,4 or 5 minute stretches did you find?