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Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

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The Badger Herald

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Bumbaca: Badgers in unfamiliar territory due to youth

Past success does not guarantee future victories
Bumbaca%3A+Badgers+in+unfamiliar+territory+due+to+youth
Jason Chan

Before Western Illinois shocked the Wisconsin men’s basketball team Friday night, a fellow reporter and I were watching highlights from the inaugural evening of the 2015-16 college basketball season.

“I wonder who’s going to get upset tonight,” he said. “There’s always one.”

“Who knows?” I said offhandedly.

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The answer? Wisconsin. I’d never guessed it, because never in a million years would I have thought Wisconsin would lose to a team like Western Illinois.

A poignant pregame ceremony to remember last season’s team set the mood for the night, but once the night’s proceedings commenced, all was forgotten.


Jason Chan/The Badger Herald

The banner rose, and the Badgers fell.

They fell hard, too.

Friday night’s loss was a painful reminder that just because a team won 36 games a season ago and came within minutes of a national title, it doesn’t guarantee future success.

Sure, Wisconsin lost some of the greatest players in program history — Frank Kaminsky, Sam Dekker and Josh Gasser. They’re the ones responsible for the banner that now hangs in the rafters of the Kohl Center.

The group of guys who raised it for them? The vast majority of them had little impact on that season, and the vast majority of them had little impact on Friday night’s game.

“But now you know why I was saying all of the things I was saying earlier about ‘Wow, some days, we got a long way to go.’” Ryan said. “But you guys thought I was saying the same old stuff. I think you see [why] now.”

No matter what, a loss to Western Illinois, in any UW athletic event, is embarrassing. Especially the men’s basketball team, a program with a rich tradition of winning over the last decade.

Instead, they let a team that won only eight games a season ago and was picked to finish dead last in the Summit League dominate them offensively for the entire evening. The Badgers defense at times looked like the guys waving airplanes into the terminal. Any drive to the hoop had a clear lane.

Friday night confirmed how bad this Badgers team could be. That doesn’t mean that’s how bad the Badgers will be. In fact, I’d bet my (theoretical) house that this Wisconsin team will end up pretty decent. They have the tools and the coach to do it, but that doesn’t mean we can sit here and ignore the glaring problems that currently plagues UW.

For starters, this team lacks a pure rim defender. Kaminsky, though not the most physical player, was at least a presence in the paint at 7-foot-1. Hopes were that Ethan Happ could be that guy, but newsflash, Happ is not Kaminsky. The misconception that he could mitigate that loss is preconceived. Kaminsky is a once-in-a-generation type of talent to come to Madison.

Nigel Hayes and Bronson Koenig have to be more consistent. The final stat box from Saturday showed both with a team-high 17 points, not a bad night at all from the junior duo. But the issue here is when the points came. All of Hayes’ points came in a 15-minute stretch during the first half. Koenig only had five in the first 20 minutes, then turned it on a little too late.

Nigel Hayes after the loss to Western Illinois.
Jason Chan/The Badger Herald

For Wisconsin to be successful, both will have to shoulder an even bigger load on the offensive end, especially since the inside attack of Happ and Vitto Brown proved to be lackluster early on.

The Badgers’ youth puts an even greater impetus on Hayes and Koenig to step it up offensively and control the game in the offensive half court.

Perhaps the scariest part in all of this is that we shouldn’t be too shocked with what happened Friday night. The scout team offense essentially did what Western Illinois did to the Badgers first-team in practice during the week leading up to the game.

“If they come in here tomorrow and hit jump shots like that, wow,” Ryan cautioned the eve of the opener. “Any team would be in trouble.”

The foreshadowing of the stunning upset is every bit as harrowing as the result itself.

The night before the game, a reporter asked Ryan whether or not he was satisfied with where the team was at.

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “You know why? Because I can’t change it. We are where we are.”

Well, where the Badgers are now isn’t where they’ve been in previous years, and that might take some getting used to for Wisconsin fans.

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