After opening the regular season with a blowout win over Penn, the No. 21 UW men’s basketball team (1-0) will host the unranked UC-Santa Barbara Gauchos (1-0) tonight.
Tonight’s contest, the first-ever meeting between the two schools and the Gauchos’ first game against a Big Ten opponent since 1993, will tip off at 7 at the Kohl Center.
Both squads enter tonight’s contest with depleted rosters. Wisconsin will take the floor without forward Greg Stiemsma, who will miss the next six to eight weeks with an injured right foot, or guard Boo Wade, who has not returned from his leave of absence.
The Badgers may also be without the services of athletic forward Alando Tucker, who played 28 minutes against Penn but has been unable to participate in practices leading up to tonight’s game with an undisclosed injury. The team has not released any information regarding Tucker’s condition, but head coach Bo Ryan said after practice Monday that Tucker has been receiving treatment and will play only if he is cleared by the medical staff.
The Gauchos have suffered an even more damaging string of injuries early in the 2004-05 campaign. Santa Barbara has seen four key players go down early in the season, as forwards Cameron Goettsche, Chris Devine and David Kennedy and guard Cecil Brown will all miss tonight’s game due to injury.
Goettsche, who averaged 9.9 points and 4.6 rebounds per game as a starter last season, is a major loss for the Gauchos, who expected the 6-foot-9 forward to play a major role down low alongside 6-foot-8 senior Casey Cook.
Santa Barbara wingman Josh Davis was named the first Big West conference Player of the Week for his performance in the season opener against San Diego State, when the junior guard posted a career-high 18 points and four steals.
Although Santa Barbara managed to take down San Diego State in overtime with four players watching from the sidelines, the Gauchos will struggle to keep pace against a deep Wisconsin squad that cycled through 11 players in the win over Penn.
“There’s numbers; we’ve got guys that are going to play,” Ryan said. “They’ll be a lot of substituting again throughout the season.”
The Badgers’ pressure defense, which includes an active full-court press, will pose a major problem for the Gauchos’ nine-man rotation, which will have to find a way to break the press effectively without running out of gas.
Ryan, however, believes the Gauchos will provide a quality early season litmus test for his team due to their solid fundamental play.
“When you think about their coach, he’s just very sound,” Ryan said. “I knew him when he was at UC-Davis and how well his teams played … And here he’s got a little better athletes from the standpoint of shooters, speed, length. It’s still all the same good stuff — good cuts, good reads. They don’t beat themselves.”
