The ESPN2 announcing crew for Wednesday night’s game between the Wisconsin Badgers and North Carolina State Wolfpack kept harping on the 10-turnover mark, and that Wisconsin had committed at least 10 turnovers in nearly all of its games this season. Wednesday against North Carolina State, Wisconsin committed only nine turnovers. That’s not bad. Greg Gard’s team improved if viewed solely through that one statistic or measurement.
The end result? A 15-point loss in a game which was not particularly close in the last 10 minutes. Was Wisconsin’s halfcourt offense profoundly or meaningfully better just because turnovers were in the single digits? I think that while one can make a case, it isn’t a very strong one. At the very least, it would seem foolish to make a strong defense of Wisconsin’s halfcourt offense when the Badgers once again failed to score 60 points, which has happened several times this season. Why die on that hill? Wait for the Badgers to win games to make that defense.
Here is the bigger issue: Wisconsin created just seven assists. Yes, that is partly a product of all the missed shots (especially 3-pointers), but if you watched that game — as I did — you very likely noticed that Wisconsin spent large portions of this game trying to take North Carolina State defenders off the dribble. In most of the instances when the Badgers drove into (or toward) the paint, they challenged N.C. State’s length, going against a bigger defender. The result was six blocked shots for the Wolfpack plus many more altered shots which showed up in Wisconsin’s 38-percent shooting clip (21 of 56).
When Wisconsin’s offense worked well against N.C. State, what happened? The most reliable bread-and-butter play was a high-low cut from the elbow through the paint, to the rim. A big man diving to the rim would catch a pass in stride, moving to the basket, and would finish with a layup or dunk. Ball movement and spacing created easy offense.
Naturally, the poor 3-point shooting crowds the floor and prevents the Badgers from being able to go to the basket with a free lane to the tin. Defenses will remain packed in the paint as long as the Badgers can’t shoot well. However, the response to a packed-in defense can’t be to make one-on-one moves off the dribble. There is no devastating one-on-one attacker who can undress a defender on the bounce and create an easy layup. Wisconsin has to move the damn ball. The rock needs to fly around the perimeter with a series of crisp, authoritative passes in a context of fluid movement which forces defenses to react and think.
The Badgers don’t have an athleticism-based advantage. The structure and fluidity of their offense has to be their weapon. Right now, there’s too much dribbling from players who can’t use the dribble to their advantage.
This is a key point: Fans will sometimes say that a team dribbles too much. That’s not my point. Notice the italics in the sentence above. It’s not that Wisconsin players dribble too much. It’s that no one can use the dribble to great effect. With James Harden (say what you want about how entertaining his style is — that’s a separate discussion), a lot of dribbling doesn’t inhibit high-end offensive production. Having the ball in Harden’s hands in an isolation play is good for the Houston Rockets. “Dribbling” isn’t bad in that context. Dribbling among players who can’t make the dribble a weapon is the problem.
That’s where Wisconsin is. The ball has to move because dribbling won’t move the ball well enough to beat a good defense.
