After a pair of dominating exhibition victories, the Wisconsin men’s basketball team is set to begin its regular season Sunday as the Badgers host Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne at the Kohl Center.
Last time the two teams squared off, the Mastodons made things interesting in the first half, leading the Badgers 27-16 with eight minutes remaining in the period. It was the speed, aggressiveness and lack of size of IPFW that caused the UW defense to struggle early on.
After playing a similar team in UW-Superior this week, head coach Bo Ryan hopes his team will be better prepared than two years ago.
“When we played Fort Wayne, for example, two years ago, they were a little smaller than us and they did a lot of things that gave us some problems,” Ryan said Wednesday night. “So hopefully tonight’s action will help us for Sunday.”
Fortunately for Wisconsin, the team’s struggles did not last long in the last matchup, as the Badgers reeled off a 22-5 run to end the half en route to an 83-55 victory.
That team featured former Badger forwards Brian Butch, Greg Stiemsma and Marcus Landry, as well as guard Michael Flowers. The only current Wisconsin Badgers who played significant minutes against IPFW two years ago were senior guards Jason Bohannon and Trevon Hughes, who led the team with 25 points.
Fortunately for Wisconsin, those two have been excellent in the team’s exhibition games.
“They’ve been solid,” Ryan said. “But now you’ve got to get to the next part of the schedule. You’ve got to continue to do the same things, you can’t be a guy that picks up the stat sheet and goes, ‘ooh, wow, look at that.'”
IPFW was picked to finish sixth in the Summit League with Wisconsin’s next opponent after the Mastodons, Oakland, picked to win the conference.
The Mastodons leading returning scorer is junior guard Ben Botts, who also led the Summit League in free throw percentage. They also return senior guard Nick Daniels, who finished second in the league with a 47.4 percent clip from beyond the arc.
They will be without reigning Summit League Sixth Man of the Year Deilvez Yearby, however, who has been suspended for the Mastodons’ season opener.
“Deilvez is a great kid who made a bad decision,” Fife said in a statement. “We have rules, and if anyone chooses to break them they must pay the price. We hope D.Y. will learn from this mistake and develop the necessary leadership skills that he will need to achieve his goals in life.”
The loss of Deilvez is a big hit to the Mastodons’ depth, as he is the team’s third-leading returning scorer from a year ago.
Wisconsin, on the other hand, has shown in its first two games that depth will likely be one of its strong points throughout the season. With such depth, they expect to be able to match the speed of the Mastodons.
“We have depth this year, and we want to push the ball,” Hughes said. “Since we have more depth, I’m not worried about getting tired. I’m going to go out there and give it my all.”
Now that the Badgers have completed their exhibition season, it’s time for the team to begin answering the questions that have surrounded it in the last six weeks.
In particular, Wisconsin has to determine just how it will replace Landry and Joe Krabbenhoft. Based on the combined 30 points and 11 rebounds from forwards Jon Leuer and Keaton Nankivil, it appears the Badgers are ready in that aspect.
In fact, according to Leuer, the Badgers expect to have a stronger post presence this season than last, even with the losses of Landry and Krabbenhoft.
“We’ve just come so far from where we were at last year,” Leuer said of himself, Nankivil and redshirt freshman Jared Berggren.
Nankivil even thinks they’re more ready than they were a year ago at this time.
“I think the way our team has played these last two games is a big difference from how we played the exhibition games last year,” Nankivil said. “I think you can see that we’re a little more ready to attack the season than we were last year.”
