Charlie Thomas played for only eight minutes in Wednesday night’s basketball game.

He didn’t appear to be injured, nor did he have a costly turnover that put him in Bo Ryan’s doghouse. In fact, he didn’t have a turnover at all.

He just didn’t play, and not even Thomas knows why. Even the coaches did not tell him much.

“There wasn’t that much to say,” Thomas said regarding his minutes. “[Ryan] didn’t really say anything.”

Thomas’s measly eight minutes is so puzzling because just four days earlier the true freshman forward played for 25 minutes and scored nine points and six rebounds in a win over Temple. That game was the Badgers’ most impressive performance of the season. It was also Thomas’s most productive game since the team’s victory over VCU, where the forward scored nine points, grabbed five rebounds and blocked three shots in 26 minutes.

Men’s basketball: Wisconsin cruises to second-straight win over Temple 76-60

But despite the freshman’s constant improvement, he still only played eight minutes Wednesday night — his second lowest total of the season.

A big part of why Thomas played 25-plus minutes in those two outings is because players in the starting frontcourt found themselves in foul trouble. Most notably, junior forward Vitto Brown had a combined eight fouls in those two games, which took a big hit on his playing time.

But Wednesday night’s game against University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee presented a slightly different situation. While Brown did finish with four fouls as the buzzer sounded, he didn’t pick up that fourth foul until there were just 57 seconds remaining in the game.

Men’s basketball: Hayes’ 32 points not enough as Panthers down Badgers

But Brown did shoot a poor 1-of-9 from the field, most of which were nearly 20 feet away from the basket. The junior appears to feel most comfortable in that spot even when his shots aren’t going in. He even went through a stretch early in the second half where he missed three straight jumpers in just over a minute.

Despite this, Brown played 33 minutes, and Thomas played eight. UW associate head coach Greg Gard attempted to provide an explanation.

“I think [Thomas] struggled picking up some things conceptually that we were looking at and talking about,” Gard said. “[Ryan] is always going to go with who he feels really has a confidence about him and sure of what we are doing.”

But Brown’s early season struggles go beyond foul trouble or any poor shooting slumps; it has been his inefficiency thus far that has plagued the Badgers.

The Ryan-coached team prides themselves on ball movement, and so far this season, Brown has stalled that movement within the team’s swing offense. While his off-ball movement is fine within the confines of the offense, the continuous flow of the swing seems to stop as soon as Brown gets his hands on the ball.

Yet, it’s clear the Wisconsin coaching staff still has faith in Brown taking those shots.

“We usually don’t show clips of missed shots unless they’re bad shots,” Gard said. “I think most of [Brown’s] were pretty good shots.”

But while Brown’s shots were open and not necessarily ill-advised, they still came early in the shot clock and on his first or second touch. It doesn’t allow the offense to develop and forces the team to play even more defense than they should have to.

Saturday’s matchup with Marquette brings an even tougher defensive matchup than Milwaukee did, as the Golden Eagles present a talented frontcourt that rivals that of the Badgers. Freshman sensation Henry Ellenson (16.7 ppg, 8.8 rpg) and junior center Luke Fischer (14.6 ppg, 7.8 rpg), who was UW’s Zak Showalter’s teammate in high school, will enter the Kohl Center Saturday as lethal offensive weapons looking to give Wisconsin’s frontcourt all they can handle.

Seeing as though both of those players prefer to do most of their damage on the inside, Thomas’s presence in the paint will be a necessary component to the recipe for a Wisconsin victory — given that he is a bigger body and is an overall better defender than someone like Brown. Despite the fact that Brown has played more than 100 more minutes than Thomas this season, the junior has just six blocks to the freshman’s five.

Eight minutes on the floor meant 32 on the bench for Thomas, but for those 32 minutes he was constantly thinking of how he can help this team.

“I’m always thinking about what I can do when I’m on the floor to help contribute to the team,” Thomas said. “I just always have to be ready.”

This is not to say Brown should be demoted from starter to reserve or not see the floor at all. That’s outlandish. Seeing as this is his third year in the program, Brown brings a veteran experience that is hard to find on this team, especially while the younger guys like Thomas develop.

The only thing is that Thomas played just eight minutes on Wednesday, and while he is still learning and growing, that certainly should not happen again.