SPORTS
Defense vital in victory
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Also by Ben Voelkel:
- Wisconsin tops Kansas State to advance to Sweet 16 (March 24, 2008)
- Balanced scoring leads team to championship (March 10, 2008)
- Wisconsin ends regular season (March 7, 2008)
- Happy basketball players come from Wisconsin (March 6, 2008)
- Big Ten Champs! (March 6, 2008)
Related Stories:
- Known for baseball prominence, Titans looking to make mark in basketball tournament (March 20, 2008)
- Beasley and Wildcats await Badgers (March 21, 2008)
- Badgers ready for Cal State Fullerton (March 19, 2008)
- Badgers advance with win over Titans (March 24, 2008)
- Stats reveal UW basketball's keys to success (December 3, 2002)
by Ben Voelkel
Monday, March 24, 2008
OMAHA, Neb. — There is always any number of reasons why one
team defeats another. In Wisconsin’s 71-56 win over Cal State Fullerton
Thursday, one statistic more than any other stands out as most significant.
The Badgers held the Big West champion Titans, a team that
averaged more than 82 points per game during the regular season, to a scant 56
points on 68 possessions, well below Wisconsin’s target defensive efficiency
mark of 1.0 points per possession.
All that despite allowing Fullerton guard Josh Akognon to
score 31 points on 11-of-23 shooting.
“I never worry about the total number (of points), I just
worry about possessions, and the number of points the other team gets on them,”
UW head coach Bo Ryan said. “They did not get one point per possession, even
though he got [31].”
Akognon did most of his damage during an eight-minute
stretch late in the second half, when the junior scored 13 consecutive points
for Fullerton. With the Titans facing a double-digit deficit, the shooter went
down gunning, making a trio of 3-pointers to keep his team in the game.
“As a defender, all you can do is try to get a hand in his
face and disrupt his natural shot,” said UW guard Michael Flowers, who spent a
good chunk of his 39 minutes of play chasing Akognon all over the Qwest Center
court. “Players are going to get their points. There is some incredible talent
in this tournament, obviously, so the only thing I’m worrying about as a
defender is making it hard.”
Wisconsin was able to slow down the Titans, literally and
figuratively, by limiting their fast break opportunities. Fullerton scored just
five points in transition.
That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise considering the
emphasis Ryan and the UW program place on eliminating easy opportunities for
opponents.
“Protecting the rim in transition is probably the first
drill I remember as a Badger coming here,” forward Joe Krabbenhoft said.
“Protect the rim first, everybody else hustle back and find shooters.”
Given the Titans’ high-octane offense, there was an even
greater need to adhere to those rules Thursday night.
“Especially on this team tonight, we really had to hustle
back and get a hand in the face of (Josh) Akognon and (Frank) Robinson and guys
like that, because they can really light you up from deep.”
It is all part of Ryan’s grand scheme, and has been for as
long as the Badger head man has been roaming the sidelines at any level of
play. This year, that scheme finished the season allowing the fewest points per
game in the nation.
“My job … was to make sure nobody scored a layup [against]
our team,” Ryan said. “Bitty league, junior high, high school, college: protect
the rim. Take charges. Try to scare guys from coming into the lane.”
That defensive strategy seemed to be turned on its head
somewhat Thursday. With the Badgers worried about letting the sharp-shooting
Titans — CSF led the Big West Conference with 278 made 3-pointers during the
season and connected on nearly 39 percent of their deep shots — bomb away from
the perimeter, UW extended its defense somewhat, opening the lane for hard cuts
to the hoop. Fullerton finished the game with 24 points in the paint.
“What they’re establishing,” Ryan said of the Titans’ offense, “your team has to be able to counter that during the course of the game, and our guys did a real good job of that tonight.”
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