For the University of Wisconsin men's basketball team, now it counts.

After completing its exhibition season Wednesday, Wisconsin faces Mercer in the team's first regular season game of the 2006-07 season at the Kohl Center.

"I'm always excited for when it starts to really count," senior forward Alando Tucker said.

While Mercer may be much of an unknown to this point, having just played their first exhibition game of the season Thursday, UW head coach Bo Ryan knows his counterpart Mark Slonaker will have the Bears ready to play.

Despite a disappointing 9-19 season a year ago, Slonaker has completely turned the Mercer program around in his previous nine seasons in Macon, Ga.

Just three years ago, Slonaker took the Bears to their first-ever Atlantic Sun regular-season game, winning the Jim Phelan National Coach of the Year Award along the way, and hopes to bounce back this year.

"I know the guy can coach," Ryan said. "He brought a team from nowhere."

Following the two exhibition games with an average margin of victory of 34.5 points, Ryan still doesn't feel as if his team is exactly where he wants it to be.

"We still have a lot of things to work on," he said. "Each game you can find things; each practice you can find things."

But after seeing two completely opposite teams — a big team in UW-Stout with two 7-footers and a small, running team in Carroll College — Ryan knows he will have a deep lineup this year that can adjust to any style of play. And with a deep roster comes an unset rotation, one that Ryan says is not set in stone whatsoever.

"I don't ever go into a game saying this is absolute," he said concerning playing time. "It's an equal opportunity substitution that I have."

Freshmen guards Jason Bohannon, Trevon Hughes and Mickey Perry received a good number of minutes in the past two games since Ryan wanted to get a good look at his new scholarship players.

The trio played well enough to make Ryan head into the regular season looking to use a four- to five-guard rotation, seemingly to include the three freshmen and starters Kammron Taylor and Michael Flowers.

Gavinski to redshirt
After struggling to adjust to the collegiate level of play, freshman center J.P. Gavinski has decided to redshirt this year.

The lanky team jokester made the decision to redshirt after Wednesday night's game against Carroll College, in which he didn't see any playing time. In the first game against UW-Stout, he went scoreless in 11 minutes.

"I figured it'd give me some experience under my belt," Gavinski said. "It'll give me time to get bigger, stronger. I think it'll help down the road for the team and myself.

"I got a ways to go."

Gavinski was expecting the coaching staff to ask him to redshirt after his struggles in practice, but found out the choice was entirely up to him — an approach Ryan has always used with freshmen contemplating the decision.

Nevertheless, Gavinski thinks Ryan would have wanted him to redshirt.

"He said I made a smart decision," Gavinski said. "I think he was thinking along the same lines as I was."

Eye-popper
Tucker spent much of last year wearing a face mask to protect his broken nose, so when he was poked in the eye during the first half Wednesday, it was a scary feeling for him.

"I got caught pretty good," he said, still sporting a shiner under his left eye. "I kind of blacked out for a little bit."