Now in her third season at the helm, Wisconsin women’s basketball head coach Bobbie Kelsey and her staff are settled in and have begun to establish her coaching style on the team.

At the epicenter of Kelsey’s style: defense.

The Badgers opened the 2012-2013 campaign with an impressive display of shutting down their opponents and holding them to a menial shooting percentage. Throughout the first four games of the season, Wisconsin held Northern Illinois, UW-Milwaukee and Drake to an average 31.5 shooting percentage.

“You have to take away [the] opponents’ strengths and maximize your own strengths,” Kelsey said. “We’re not going to let people do what they are normally going to do. If they beat you, they have to do something that they either worked on or made that adjustment to. Most folks keep with their favorite move in their comfort zone, and we want to take them out of that comfort zone.”

Kelsey sends her players into every contest with a game plan, which usually involves focusing on the opposing teams’ top scorers. For example, against Drake, their two top scorers were unable to crack double digits. She implements the man-to-man defense and instructs her players to force ball handlers to use their weak hand to drive to the basket.

“You can’t let the best shooter out there shoot,” Kelsey said. “If they are going to beat you, it has to be a contested shot over your hand. If they are making that, then there’s nothing you can do about that, but if you are there — and you are making it hard for them then — you should have some success.”

But defense is more than just a game plan to this team. It is a way of life.

Kelsey knows her team is going to put the ball in the hoop, but she insists the other side of the court is where the outcome of games will be determined.

“Coach [Kelsey] preaches it every day,” junior forward Jacki Gulczynski said. “We are going to have to keep our feet in front of the ball. You are not going to win a championship on offense.”

The players have learned from their wise coach and have realized that the only way to turn around mediocre seasons of 9-20 in 2011-2012 and 12-19 in 2012-2013 is to give their all on defense. No longer is the focus on how many points a player had, but how many steals, rebounds, or blocked shots a player had. No longer is the goal a number to reach on offense, but a number they will refuse to let the other team reach on defense.

Defense is not the only change in attitude visible from the team this season. Boxing out and rebounding has come into the forefront as well. If there is something Kelsey and her staff will not tolerate, it is giving up offensive rebounds. The players know they will run during practice if their rebounding game is not up to par. In practice, coaches will interrupt a possession and send players to do sprints if one team allows more than two offensive rebounds during a possession.

“What Coach Bobbie says is what we try to do,” junior forward Michala Johnson said. “We know that if we don’t get a certain amount of rebounds or allow too many second chances the rims will be up and we’ll be running in practice.”

Rebounding is an aspect of the game the team has failed to fully grasp thus far in the season. Coming into Thursday’s game against Alabama, Wisconsin had significantly out-rebounded their opponents by an average of 10 per game. However, the Crimson Tide dominated the Badgers on the glass, pulling down 19 offensive rebounds, a key factor in a 70-62 loss for the Badgers, their first of the season.

“Our problem is the rebounding, we did not box out,” Kelsey said after the game. “We worked on it all week, and that is what makes it even more disheartening because it is something we emphasize and work on and we don’t do it very well.”

This Badgers squad has more potential than any other women’s team to walk out of the locker room in a while. They know what individual sacrifices they will have to make to reach team goals, and they are ready to make the leap from mediocrity to a Big Ten Title contender. Most of all, they have realized what will get them there.

Defense and rebounding.