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Also by Scott Lipow:
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by Scott Lipow
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Since the inception of exhibition play in college basketball, the Wisconsin men’s basketball team has played its first two games of the year against international teams, “all-star” teams and, most recently, NBDL teams.
This year, however, the Badgers’ two exhibition games are both against small in-state schools, Division-II UW-Parkside and Division-III UW-Platteville.
In the past, teams from different NCAA divisions were not allowed to play each other in exhibition games. New legislation, spearheaded by UW head coach Bo Ryan, has made this possible.
Formerly the coach of four national champion teams at UW-Platteville, Ryan never envisioned that an exhibition matchup between Wisconsin and UW-Platteville would ever come to fruition.
“It came up in conversation maybe once every two years just thinking about the possibility, but at that time I believe, I can’t remember the year it changed, there was only one exhibition game that schools were allowed to do,” Ryan said of the possibility of his Platteville teams playing a Division-I foe like Wisconsin. “Then, when it was two, then the thought started coming up about playing schools rather than international teams or AAU type teams … I really didn’t think about it that much, but every once in a while it did come up in conversation just for the fact that it was in the state.”
Teams like UW-Parkside and UW-Platteville provide better competition for the Badgers than the foreign and AAU teams of years past, while Wisconsin’s opponents are fortunate to enjoy the exciting experience of playing in the Kohl Center in front of thousands of fans.
“Our players are very excited, obviously” Platteville’s head coach Paul Combs said. “The final outcome isn’t as important as the event. For our student-athletes, our community, and all the Pioneer fans throughout the state of Wisconsin, to participate in this game, to play in one of the top venues in all of college basketball against one of the top Division-I programs is a great opportunity that our guys will remember forever.”
The games give Wisconsin a better chance to game plan around a team’s tendencies as the D-II and D-III teams have actual scouting reports to look at.
“The three pages of notes that I was able to get from the edited clips for the Parkside game, as opposed to last year playing one of the AAU teams there was only one page of edited clips,” Ryan said.
While the games give the Badgers a chance to work on areas of concern, the low level of competition doesn’t give Ryan much of a chance to determine just how far they have come.
“I don’t know how much to measure how much progress — I can’t, there’s no gauge,” Ryan said. “I like some of the things we’re doing at times. At other times it just shows how much further we need to go and what we’ve go to do to be able to compete in the Big Ten.”
Battling injuries: Wisconsin’s young big men haven’t had much time to learn from their mistakes during the UW-Parkside game as they have been sidelined with injuries. Brian Butch, Greg Stiemsma and Jason Chappell have all sat out the Badgers’ last few practices as they recover from injuries.
“They have not practiced the past couple days … They’re coming along,” Ryan said. “I know they’re making progress, but we haven’t seen them for the past couple days.”
The biggest problem for UW is not being able to run a full practice as the Badgers are short on bodies.
“We didn’t have enough to practice with … Yesterday’s practice was a real struggle,” Ryan said. “We have to get our number up from 15, and we’ll try to do that by going through the proper channels because when you have things like this happen, you got to be able to practice.”
