Though the game may not have the importance of a Big Ten conference battle, the Wisconsin men’s basketball team is just happy to get their season under way Wednesday night when Bemidji State comes to the Kohl Center.
The new season brings new faces to Wisconsin’s starting lineup. UW head coach Bo Ryan is figuring out who will fill the holes seniors Marcus Landry and Joe Krabbenhoft left and what the rotation in general will look like. The answers lie on the court.
“The only way to find out is that we’ve got to start playing people,” Ryan said. “When you’re going against each other it’s so hard to tell a lot of things other than as long as everybody’s working hard you have a chance to get better. Then as you keep getting games under your belt you get a feel of that next level, meaning outside of practice when you’re going against the best that the other team has too. So you know we’ll just wait and see, but the effort is there. They’re working on their footwork, positioning, all those things, and I’ve seen some improvement.”
The exhibition game against Division II Bemidji State will help Wisconsin get a sense of that “next level.”
Although they are a Division II school, the Beavers will still help the Badgers get ready for the season as UW tries out different combinations of players.
“It’s getting guys on the floor, looking at combinations, [and scoring] officials,” Ryan said. “You’ll see some better officials and you get used to any new rules or any points of emphasis. A point of emphasis is where people are taking the charge underneath or around the basket … you get on the floor and you look at the points of emphasis and you get combos.”
Besides getting on the court against another team, playing Bemidji State also has a special connection behind it.
Beavers head coach Matt Bowen used to be a ball boy with Ryan’s son when they were younger and Wisconsin is Bowen’s home. According to Ryan, many teams appealed for the exhibition game against the Badgers, but he selected the Beavers because “it’s natural for [Bowen] to want to come back home.”
Along with looking at different combinations, the game will also help the Badgers get used to any new rules or different things officials will be looking at this year. While Ryan hopes there will be a new emphasis on properly calling offensive fouls, he does acknowledge that basketball is a tough sport to referee.
“So many offensive players will jump into a defensive player that’s standing there, that has position and displaces the defensive player. … It’s an offensive foul,” Ryan said. “They say they’re going to call that this year and I’ve been lobbying that for a long time … [but] it’s all about angles. Basketball is so tough to officiate. Every year, I always say, no way in the world would I ever disagree with an official in October.”
On Defense
In recent years Wisconsin has played a tough defensive game and has even led the nation in scoring defense.
Naturally there is some anticipation for some of the new Badgers to fill in where they have previously left off. One such player who was noted is redshirt freshman Jared Berggren. Standing at 6 feet 10 inches tall, some expect Berggren to really develop into a good defensive player, but Ryan believes he cannot place him into that category yet.
“When we teach defense, we’re not a great shot-blocking team,” Ryan said. “We’ve had a guy like [Greg] Stiemsma who really used his body to send messages, which was one of the reasons we led the nation in defense his senior year, and also with Brian Butch, it kept people from getting to the rim. … If Berggren and these other guys just work hard everyday and do the things some of these other players committed to, then he might be considered a pretty good defensive presence, but it’s so early that I can’t put him in that category yet.
“He’s fun to coach because he comes out every day and works extremely hard. He’s got a great start and now we’ll see how he develops.”
