It was a matter of simple math: On Saturday against the Michigan State Spartans, the Wisconsin Badgers did not have two players who had been members of their starting five earlier in the season. Kobe King left, and Brad Davison was suspended. Greg Gard needed other players to play more minutes and better minutes.
Aleem Ford played only six minutes against Michigan State on January 17. He didn’t score a point. Brevin Pritzl did play 23 minutes in that game, but he scored only two points.
When the Badgers lost in East Lansing, 67-55, two players scored in double figures for the Badgers. Nate Reuvers had 19 points, D’Mitrik Trice 10. Doing simple math, that’s 29 points from Wisconsin’s two best and most talented scorers.
Guess how many points Reuvers and Trice combined for in this rematch with Michigan State? Yep: 29. Reuvers scored 15, Trice 14.
The supporting cast had to show up, and given that King and Davison weren’t on the floor for any of Saturday’s 40 minutes, that meant other players had to answer the bell, players who haven’t generally been at the forefront of this team’s offense this season.
Ford and Pritzl delivered the goods. Ford scored 13 efficient points on 5-of-6 shooting, while Pritzl contributed 10. Yes, they contributed in ways other than scoring, combining for 11 rebounds and three steals. Those were important, too. Yet, Wisconsin’s offense — which did die in the final seven minutes — had to have enough scoring punch for the defense’s superb performance to matter.
Ford and Pritzl gave Wisconsin the extra ounces of production it was always going to need in order to pull off the upset of Tom Izzo’s group with a shorthanded roster.
As a result of Ford’s and Pritzl’s big games, guess what happened? Wisconsin, for one of the rare times this season in Big Ten play, produced FOUR double-figure scorers. We have talked about that point a lot this season, begging the Badgers to develop a more balanced identity instead of Reuvers or Trice (or both) having to shoulder too much of the load. With two key players unavailable, this mini-crisis — this urgent moment — brought out the best in Ford and Pritzl.
This was a microcosm of the whole day for the Badgers: This game could have brought out UW’s least appealing, least attractive side. This game could have become a blowout loss, which would have darkened the gloomy clouds hovering over the program after a real trash sandwich of a week. Instead, the players rallied around each other and Greg Gard.
Aleem Ford and Brevin Pritzl rallied ’round the flag more than anyone else.