Just like that, Wisconsin basketball is back.
While much of Badger Nation remains strapped in for what figures to be a wild finish to the Big Ten football season, the UW men’s basketball team will get an early start on their season Saturday night in an exhibition game against UW-Stevens Point at the Kohl Center.
Wisconsin is looking to build off last season’s run to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament, where the Badgers were ultimately bested by the eventual runner-up Butler Bulldogs. Despite trailing by as many as 20 points, Wisconsin drew within four points after a miraculous second-half effort by point guard Jordan Taylor, which nearly made up for a first half in which the Badgers scored only 24 points. Ultimately, the Bulldogs’ lead proved insurmountable, due in large part to Wisconsin’s 17-for-56 (.304) effort from the field.
Taylor, now a senior, finished as an Associated Press second-team All-American and is UW’s undisputed leader now that Jon Leuer and Keaton Nankivil have graduated. The 6-foot-1, 195-pound Bloomington, Minn., native averaged 18.1 points, 4.7 assists and 4.1 rebounds per game in the 2010-11 season, and his 3.83 assist-to-turnover ratio was the nation’s best. Despite playing 36.5 minutes per game, Taylor set career-highs in field goal percentage (.433), three-point field goal percentage (.429) and free throw shooting percentage (.832).
“I just hope he doesn’t think he has to score 40 [points] a game this year,” head coach Bo Ryan said at the team’s media day, who will be looking to lead UW to its 14th consecutive NCAA tournament. “I think we’re going to be in trouble if he does. He doesn’t. He wants to be even more consistent; he wants to be more inclusive with his teammates, maybe transition.”
But as brilliant as he was last season, 2011-12 poses an entirely different set of challenges for Taylor, who has earned preseason first-team All-American honors from the AP, Blue Ribbon Yearbook and Athlon. With Leuer (18.3 ppg, 7.2 rpg), Nankivil (9.7 ppg, 4.2 rpg) and Tim Jarmusz (3.9 ppg, 2.2 rpg) gone, the Badgers will be looking for three new replacements in the frontcourt.
“We have to figure out right now where the points are coming from,” Ryan said. “There’s something about points. People usually step up and get them. If you run good offense, get good shots, you have guys that are unselfish.
“And then defensively, you look at those three seniors and what they learned defensively, that’s quite an accomplishment. I think they led the Big Ten all four years they were here in points given up. So they understood our defensive system, they understood our offensive system.”
The Badgers do have some likely answers, though, in sophomore guard Josh Gasser and junior forward Mike Bruesewitz. Gasser, a Port Washington native, started 30 of UW’s 34 games his freshman year, averaging 5.9 points, 3.8 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game. The 6-foot-3, 190-pound guard also recorded the first triple-double in school history (also the first freshman in Big Ten history since Earvin “Magic” Johnson in 1977) at Northwestern on Jan. 23.
Bruesewitz, meanwhile, resumed the high-energy play that, along with his conspicuous orange afro, made him a fan favorite in his freshman year. “Brueser,” a 6-foot-6, 222-pound forward from St. Paul, Minn., averaged 4.6 points and 3.1 rebounds per game, and also emerged as an outside shooting threat, nailing 32.3 percent of his three-point attempts.
The rest of Wisconsin’s rotation figures to be filled by some permutation of redshirt junior forward/center Jared Berggren, senior guard/forward Rob Wilson and redshirt junior guard/forward Ryan Evans. The Badgers also boast a number of promising young players looking to build off freshmen seasons that were mainly developmental, most notably guard Ben Brust and forward Duje Dukan.
