It's the first day of the NCAA tournament, and like all responsible sports enthusiasts, I've ditched school and taken a personal day to soak up as many of the 16 games on today as humanly possible. To hell with the Masters, this is the true tradition like no other.
And while today Wisconsinites are simply fans of college basketball, tomorrow the real business begins as Wisconsin takes the court against Texas A&M Corpus Christi. Then all that love for collegiate hoops takes a backseat to Bucky.
Can the Badgers make a deep run in the NCAA tournament? That is the question wracking the brains of this campus more than any midterm coming up.
Losing a Polar Bear and three of six games has fans wary of UW's chances, and it's understandable.
The fact is, though, that this team is good. Very good. Final Four good.
But the problem is the Badgers have an Achilles heel that even Achilles himself would call a weakness: their shooting.
On the season, the Badgers are shooting a little more than 46 percent from the field. That's not too shabby, as exemplified by the team's school-record 29 wins, and it is a number that compares well to many tournament teams. In UW's five losses, however, the Badgers are shooting just a hair more than 36 percent. That 10 percent difference tells a story more straightforward than "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."
Losing Brian Butch hurts, but losing your shooting touch hurts more. How far Wisconsin will go in the tournament will depend entirely on how well they shoot.
When the Badgers shoot 50 percent from the field, there are only a handful of teams in the nation that can beat them. And for even those select few teams that can take down Bo Ryan's boys on a hot shooting night, they will have to play well to do so.
That's because besides shooting percentage, UW is an eerily consistent team. The Badgers rarely turn the ball over, play some of the tightest defense in the country and (typically) get to the free-throw line often enough to keep their opponents in foul trouble, while staying foul-free themselves.
The team also has a star player and go-to guy in Alando Tucker, plus one of the nation's most dangerous second bananas in Kam Taylor.
This is why the Badgers haven't lost every game this year when their shot hasn't been falling. They are good enough to overcome that against most teams.
So if UW shoots 38 percent against TAMUCC, the Badgers probably will live to shoot another day. On the road against Ohio State, Wisconsin shot a hideous 35 percent and still managed to have a chance to win in the final moments, losing by a single point.
But if Wisconsin wants to make its way to the Final Four and eventually take down some of the top-notch teams they will eventually need sharp shooting to give themselves a little more room for error.
But how do the Badgers shoot a higher percentage? The answer is to get back to the basics. Ryan's "swing offense" is often dissected, talked about and put under the microscope, but at the core of UW's offensive philosophy is to get the ball inside, or "touch the paint" as Ryan puts it. That doesn't mean Jason Chappell or Tucker has to shoot it every time the ball gets to them inside, but it does mean Wisconsin's offense is most effective when:
A. Shots are being taken close to the basket,
B. The Badgers are getting fouled, often near the hoop, and
C. When perimeter shots are coming off of kick outs from the post.
Simply put, outside of Tucker, the Badgers aren't a team that is going to have much success creating its own shot, and even Tucker can suffer from off nights when he is attempting one Barnum & Bailey shot after another.
No, regardless of how difficult it might seem, UW will benefit exponentially from getting the ball inside, even against the toughest of zones (though Ohio State's is the equivalent to Dante's 7th layer of hell) and just do what the team does best.
Although it's too late to change your bracket, don't worry about the Badgers' chances of truly making 2007 a special season. This team is talented, battle-tested and has a chip on its shoulder.
Just hope for some good shooting, now and down the road, and maybe, just maybe, you'll have to change your spring break location to Atlanta.
Dave McGrath is a senior majoring in English and journalism. If you'd like to talk about how awesome a Sweet 16 bracket with Arizona, Maryland, Winthrop, Wisconsin, Kansas, Southern Illnois, Pitt, UCLA, North Carolina, Texas, Wazzu, Texas Tech, Ohio State, Tennessee, Texas A&M and Memphis is, you can reach him at [email protected].
