Tag: NCAA Tourmament

No love lost, Badgers beat Wolverines 64-59 on Tuesday

In a Valentine’s Day matchup between two teams that don’t like each other much, Wisconsin came out on top 64-59 over Michigan.

In a Valentine’s Day matchup between two teams that don’t like each other much, Wisconsin came out on top 64-59 over Michigan. The victory was a massive one for the Badgers as they are walking the tightrope of either making or missing the NCAA Tournament.

Led by freshman phenom Connor Essegian, who scored 23 points (6-12 FG, 2-7 3Pt, 9-10 FT), Wisconsin was able to hold off their Big Ten foe on Tuesday night at the Kohl Center.

In what was a neck and neck contest, the Badgers were fortunate to come out with a victory. After heading into halftime down 32-31, they were able to take advantage of some costly turnovers by Michigan to give them the edge in the second half. The team was able to turn seven Wolverine mistakes into nine points on the opposite end in the second period compared to Michigan’s inability to do anything with three Wisconsin turnovers.

Overall in the game, the Badgers shot a lower percentage (33%) than the Wolverines (42%) and they failed to score in the fastbreak, but their superior free-throw shooting (14-18 = 78% vs 6-10 = 60%) gave them the edge, especially when they only made two of their last 18 shots and went the 10:45 without a field goal.

Most importantly, it seemed fitting that the Badgers would beat Juwan Howard and his Wolverines on Valentine’s Day in his first trip back to Madison after his cheap shot on assistant coach Joe Krabbenhoft last February. Additionally, big man Hunter Dickinson of Michigan described the Badgers as “scumbags” in an interview in early January, so it must have been very gratifying for the team to limit him to just 12 points.

Although the win is nice, the performance left much to be desired for Greg Gard’s squad. To their credit, Wisconsin has played the ninth hardest schedule this year, but they’ll still likely need to win at least three of their final five regular season games to have a real shot at March Madness.

For Wisconsin, they are now 15-10 on the season and 7-8 in the Big Ten. They’ll return to action at home again on Saturday when they take on Rutgers (16-10) at 11 AM CT.

Michigan fell to 14-12 (8-7 Big Ten) with the loss and their tournament hopes are all but vanquished. In all likelihood, unless they can make some major noise down the stretch, the Wolverines will not be in March Madness.

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Wisconsin lands on the outside of ESPN’s updated Bracketology

Joe Lunardi and ESPN released their latest Bracketology on Tuesday and Wisconsin landed on the outside looking in for the NCAA Tournament.

Joe Lunardi and ESPN released their latest Bracketology on Tuesday and Wisconsin landed on the “Next Four Out” section. This means that as of today, the Badgers would miss the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2018 according to Lunardi’s projections.

Greg Gard’s squad has had a fall from grace since the new year after starting the season 12-2, as they’re now sitting at 13-10 on the campaign. The 1-8 stretch has been partly due to the injuries that Tyler Wahl (ankle) and Max Klesmit (upper body) suffered, with those two missing five games combined, but even with a full starting lineup, the team has struggled greatly.

At this point in the season, Wisconsin doesn’t have much time to turn it around and will have to go on a substantial run to earn a ticket to March Madness. They’re next contest will come Wednesday night at 7:30 PM on the road at Penn State (14-10).

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March moments which helped Wisconsin: Syracuse-Indiana 2013

Syracuse helped Wisconsin

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.