Wisconsin basketball is nationally known for execution. This team is perenially one that most coaches and players dread playing against because you know you are in for a fight. You know that the Badgers will probably make less mistakes than you do. They will probably foul less, turn the ball over less, and run prettier offense. But what if Wisconsin didn’t actually run offense at all in their Final Four runs?
Former Badger and current pro Sam Dekker, a member of both the 2014 and 2015 Final Four teams, took to Twitter this afternoon to alert the people that Bo Ryan and the Badgers did not really need to run anything fancy on offense. It wasn’t even running through the patented swing offense that led to tremendous offensive clinics. Instead, they knew each other so well that they could just play. Sometimes not over-coaching, especially when you have the talent that the 2014 and 2015 Badger teams had, is the best coaching. Here is how Dekker put it on Twitter:
since it’s still March madness I wanted to share something. our ‘14 and ‘15 years everyone talked about how well we ran “our offense”. truth be told, we didn’t run ANYTHING. just 5 guys that knew how to play off each other and cut a lot. This is all improv here. pic.twitter.com/NGgIxti1ld
— Sam Dekker (@dekker) March 28, 2020
It’s stunning to think that most of Wisconsin’s offense in those two tournaments was improv, but it actually makes sense. They knew each other extremely well, and were all focused on a common goal of winning. All that was left to do was play basketball.