We have spent much of the past 10 days looking back at significant March basketball games involving the Wisconsin Badgers, and we will continue to do that here at Badgers Wire to get you through a March without an NCAA Tournament in 2020.
However, it is also worth looking at March moments from the recent past which did not involve the Badgers. These moments greatly benefited the UW hoops program in ways which weren’t easy to see at the time.
We know that Michigan State is still chugging along under Tom Izzo, so it is pointless and lacking in substance to identify a Michigan State loss as being uniquely beneficial to Wisconsin. Michigan State’s overall standing as a program hasn’t been harmed by past March losses. It missed a chance to win a championship in specific seasons, but the Spartans are still… the Spartans. They are still really good. They are not in a position where they were once really good, then suffered a loss, and then struggled to recover. They have not endured a clear downturn which Wisconsin has taken advantage of.
Other Big Ten programs, however, HAVE endured that precise downturn. We will look at some March moments which represented significant negative turning points for them… and positive turning points for the Badgers.
Our first installment: the 2013 East Regional semifinals in Washington, D.C., between the Indiana Hoosiers and the Syracuse Orange.
Keep in mind that Indiana was a No. 1 seed in the 2013 NCAA Tournament. The Hoosiers, under Tom Crean, had a loaded team with multiple future NBA players. The previous year, in 2012, the Hoosiers were a Sweet 16 underdog. They played top-seeded Kentucky well in a very emotional and entertaining game. One could see at the end of the 2012 season that Indiana was going to be a beast in 2013. The Hoosiers lived up to the billing in the regular season, but they needed to deliver the goods in March to reach the Final Four and fully restore the program.
When they lost to Syracuse in 2013, flummoxed by Jim Boeheim’s 2-3 zone — Cody Zeller simply REFUSED to take the free-throw line jump shot a good team needs to take (and make) against a zone — Indiana lost its last, best chance to be great under Tom Crean. Yes, Indiana did make the Sweet 16 three years later, in 2016, but the Hoosiers were back in the underdog role they had in 2012 versus Kentucky. Indiana was no match for top-seeded North Carolina in the 2016 Sweet 16, and the Hoosiers haven’t been back to the Sweet 16 since. Crean is messing around at Georgia and failing to find the answers for the Bulldogs in the SEC.
Indiana losing to Syracuse in 2013 is an outcome the Hoosiers have truly never recovered from. It is one of several significant events which created a Big Ten power vacuum below Michigan State. Wisconsin stepped into that vacuum very clearly, and is still reaping the benefits years later, in a new decade.