There is still more to say about Wisconsin’s win on Friday over Ohio State — not because we are trying to overemphasize one victory, not because of any sense that Wisconsin’s season has been permanently set on the right course (it hasn’t been), but because the characteristics displayed in that win are so central to building a good season.
The Badgers haven’t fully arrived as a team, but they have fully realized what they need to do to make it happen. It is one thing to say that resilience is important; it is quite another thing to demonstrate resilience under pressure against a good opponent.
Wisconsin didn’t need much resilience against Tennessee. The Badgers dominated that game the whole way. It was surely a big step forward for the team, given its struggles away from the Kohl Center, but the game didn’t involve much of any adversity. It was a day when nearly everything went right, and a team doesn’t learn what it is made of in those games.
A team learns what it is capable of when it stares down the barrel of a six-point deficit midway through the second half against Ohio State, in Columbus, with Kaleb Wesson on the other side, and manages to shut out Wesson in the final 6:32 of regulation, en route to a win in spite of terrible 3-point shooting. Wisconsin fired lots of blanks but still won. Resilience was the Badgers’ number-one weapon, and that is the big takeaway for the rest of this season.
What is the best illustration of Wisconsin’s resilience, you might ask? Good question. I have just the statistic for you.
How awful was Wisconsin in the first six minutes of both halves against Ohio State? Try this: Wisconsin was outscored 20-2 in those 12 minutes — the first six minutes of the first half, combined with the first six minutes of the second half. In the first six minutes of the game, Wisconsin was outscored 7-0. In the first six minutes of the second half, the Badgers were outscored 13-2.
Twice, the boulder was rolling downward, beginning to become a snowball. Twice, the Badgers somehow gathered up the strength to prevent the boulder from a full-tilt crash down the slope. That is an enormous feat of resolve.
We know this team doesn’t have the high-end talent of the Frank Kaminsky-Sam Dekker team. We don’t have to pretend it is going to dominate any especially good team. The victories it attains against quality opposition away from Kohl Center are almost always going to be close. It’s just the way it is.
However, in a college basketball season where no one is especially strong, Wisconsin has a path to the Final Four: the Dick Bennett path of 2000. This team will go far if it can be annoying as possible on defense and find buckets of added resilience, as it showed against Ohio State. That’s the path. Wisconsin isn’t going to strut into the NCAA Tournament and hang 80 on somebody. It’s going to win rock fights.
Resilience is this team’s biggest weapon. Let’s at least hope the Badgers can start halves less terribly, though — we wouldn’t want that to remain a pattern.