After winning against Penn State Sunday afternoon, it seems as if the Badgers’ season is turning around. Despite a stretch of six-straight losses to conference opponents, the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team has started a streak of another kind by stringing together two wins in as many games. After defeating No. 23 ranked Illinois 63-50 on Feb. 5, the Badgers followed up with a 54-44 victory on the road against Penn State on Sunday.
Although UW has won its last two games, head coach Bo Ryan indicated their recent success doesn’t guarantee they will win when Iowa comes to Madison on Wednesday. Ryan doesn’t believe that winning or losing a game comes down to simply making or not making plays. He also emphasizes that each opponent has to be approached differently.
“Each game is its separate entity,” Ryan said. “I can’t make it simplistic. I try to make it easy to understand for the players.”
Ryan pointed out that the outcome of Sunday’s game might have been different if Penn State guards Stanley Pringle and Talor Battle got hot shooting threes. Instead, Penn State went 0 for 14 as a team from behind the arc, which is something Ryan admits is “hard to explain.”
Landry approaches a milestone
With a 13-point performance on Sunday against Penn State, senior forward Marcus Landry stands a mere seven points from a milestone 1,000 points for his career at Wisconsin. Reaching this mark will put Landry in elite company as one of only 33 players in the program’s history to achieve this.
Ryan praised Landry not just for approaching a number, but also what it says about him as a player.
“The fact that he’s nearing that milestone, I’m excited for him. He’s been pretty consistent, and he comes ready to go to work every day,” Ryan said. “He has worked extremely hard to be a contributor to the point where he is considered to be one of the better players in the league because he does a lot of things and he draws a lot of attention, especially in the post.”
Leuer steps into starting rotation
With sophomore Keaton Nankivil out of the starting lineup due to injury, sophomore Jon Leuer has seized the opportunity to make his first two career starts in the past two games. With his new position in the rotation, Leuer has totaled 12 and 15 points in the last two games.
Despite these good performances in the starting role, Ryan doesn’t see it as the main factor for his good play.
“The starting has nothing to do with whether Jon’s scoring or not,” Ryan said. “He still got 24 minutes. If you look at his minutes, he was scoring pretty well when he was coming off the bench.”
Overall, Ryan doesn’t see starting a game as significant, so he is still unsure whether Nankivil or Leuer will be in the starting lineup come Wednesday.
Much of the decision will likely rest on if Nankivil is healthy for the game against Iowa. He didn’t play against Illinois and only logged two minutes against Penn State.
“He’s OK; he’s coming back and he’s working at it,” Ryan said about Nankivil’s status.
Leuer’s playing time is not likely to change, but the formality of a starting position is yet to be determined.
“He’ll play, but I don’t know whether he’ll be starting or not,” Ryan said.
