Wisconsin men’s basketball head coach Greg Gard affirmed his belief that a big part of the team’s success has been an improvement in players’ cohesive play and understanding concepts better — especially when it comes to the younger members of the team.

With Wisconsin (19-10 Overall, 11-5 Big Ten) scheduled to play Minnesota (8-20) Wednesday in Minneapolis, Gard took a moment Monday to reflect on what helped Wisconsin reach this point in the season, and how he plans to move the team forward.

Gard placed his focus on the team’s evolution as a whole, rather than just zoning in on one player. He addressed a few key advancements that have made the biggest difference in overall play.

“I think we’ve gotten better offensively. I found some great clips where we moved the ball well last night,” Gard said. “Defensively I found great clips where we really exchanged well in dribble penetration attempts. We also exchanged ball screens at the right time. There was three or four that we made mistakes with ball screens, where we got caught too high on the screener, and they threw over the top of us.”

The team might not be perfect yet, but Gard is clearly paying close attention to mistakes that were made and deciding how to effectively repair them.

Despite the obvious upward trend in Wisconsin’s play, Gard is still hesitant to look as far as the upcoming tournaments. Rather, he prefers a different approach when it comes to continuing the team’s success. Gard and the rest of the Badgers maintain the mindset of taking things one day, and one practice at a time.

“That’s the mindset we’ve taken all year. I don’t even really let them jump ahead even to the game yet,” Gard said. “It’s about today, and the first hour it will be how we can get better ourselves. A lot of today’s practice will be individual improvement and some team things as well, and also making sure that we’re staying healthy. If we need to rest a few guys here or there we’ll do that and be smart about that.”

In terms of future strategies, Gard’s approach is relatively the same.

“I think at this point in time in the year, you have to be careful. We’re not going to reinvent the wheel,” he said. “Nothing miraculous is going to be discovered in today’s practice other than where we can sharpen up, get better in areas and a lot of that will be visual with the video.”

So far, Gard’s one-day-at-a-time mindset and attention to detail has been working in the Badgers’ favor.