As the Wisconsin women’s basketball team prepared for its rematch tonight with Michigan State — a game that could end the Badgers’ first three-game losing streak since 1998 — it was clear that the team had shifted its focus away from last week’s lofty NCAA tournament rhetoric. Rather, on Tuesday, the team worked on simply putting one foot in front of the other.
In past weeks, Wisconsin might have broken up practice with a no-holds-barred pick-up game against its all-male scout team. But Tuesday, Albright spent the time explaining the finer points of the motion offense UW will use to combat Michigan State’s match-up zone. In a rather literal approach to hands-on education, Albright at one point gently shoved starting power forward Jessie Stomski into the correct position on the low right block.
“In the beginning of the season you work so hard on fundamentals that they’re right there,” Stomski said after practice. “They’re automatic. Then, when the season goes on, you just look at the five-on-five things. You look at a lot of tape, you look at a lot of plays, and you don’t emphasize the fundamentals as much. That’s what we got back to today.”
Good thing for Wisconsin, because for the past week the Badgers have played fundamentally ugly basketball. UW has been plagued — actually, UW has plagued itself — with poor shooting, sloppy turnovers and dispirited rebounding efforts.
Indiana and Penn State, UW’s last two opponents, have dominated the Badgers on the offensive glass, grabbing 35 offensive rebounds to Wisconsin’s 17. Against Penn State, UW’s deficit was 18-7. And matters probably won’t improve against Michigan State tonight: the Spartans lead the Big Ten in offensive boards, with more than 15 per game.
“You know, four people can box out, and then that one person has free roam to go anywhere,” Stomski said. “So it has to be five people. It can’t just be the two posts, whose job it is to rebound. It has to be all five. Otherwise, somebody’s going to crash.”
In Michigan State the Badgers will face a team built around its big players. Although the Spartans’ normal rotation features only one player who measures more than 6-foot-1, the Spartans grab more rebounds (38.2 per game) than any Big Ten team except Iowa, and they allow fewer rebounds (33 per game) than anybody else. Furthermore, the Spartans three most prolific scorers all play in the frontcourt — freshman center Kelli Roehrig, sophomore forward Julie Pagel and junior forward Syreeta Bromfield.
Even worse for Wisconsin, the Badgers will have to shut down the Spartan rebounding machine without the services of one of UW’s tallest players. Six-foot-three freshman Ebba Gebisa, UW’s only inside player to see significant minutes off the bench this season, will almost certainly miss tonight’s game and may even miss Sunday’s game at Purdue, according to team representative Tam Flarup.
Still recovering from a high left-ankle sprain she sustained against Minnesota two Sundays ago, Gebisa pedaled her way through Tuesday’s practice on a stationary bike. She has shed the crutches and plastic leg cast that accompanied her last week, and afterward she walked freely on an ankle wrapped only with a small layer of athletic tape. Despite Gebisa’s apparent improvement, however, the team listed her as doubtful for tonight and questionable for Sunday.
Last time the two teams met, on Jan. 10, the Spartans destroyed Wisconsin underneath both baskets, out-rebounding the Badgers 53-39. The Spartans grabbed 25 offensive rebounds, but they scored only 22 second-chance points, and Wisconsin parlayed a four-point, final-minute comeback into an eight-point double-overtime win.
It was the last victory of UW’s 15-game winning streak. The Badgers proceeded to lose to three consecutive unranked opponents for the first time since their seven-win ’92-’93 campaign.
“You gain or lose confidence based on how you perform on the basketball court,” Albright said. “If that’s an indication, [our confidence] should not be very high. We have not performed like a great basketball team.”
