Tag: North Carolina State Basketball

One of the more subtle truths of sports — known by everyone but not always at the forefront of one’s mind — is that when a team plays a truly awful half, the opponent needs to make sure it takes full advantage. When one team plays terribly, it needs to pay a supreme price.

This truth is part of the story of how the Wisconsin Badgers led Bo Ryan to his first Elite 8 as UW’s head basketball coach.

At halftime of the 2005 East Regional semifinal in Syracuse, the North Carolina State Wolfpack led Wisconsin, 30-21. A nine-point lead is a solid lead, but it was far less than it could have been or — from a North Carolina State fan’s viewpoint — should have been.

Just how atrocious were the Badgers in that first half against N.C. State in the 2005 Sweet 16? Scoring only 21 points is enough of an indication of how awful that half was for UW, but the ultimate indicator was the comparison of Wisconsin assists to turnovers. The Badgers didn’t create ONE assist in that half, and they coughed up 11 turnovers. That is as bad as it gets, as bad as one could possibly imagine.

Yet, Wisconsin — after all of that — was down only nine. A minor miracle, truly.

They probably should have been down by 19.

When Wisconsin outscored North Carolina State by 18 points in the second half, UW had not suffered a narrow loss. It had won and won with some degree of comfort in spite of its terrible opening 20 minutes.

Wisconsin slapped a 44-26 second half on the Wolfpack, reeling off 13 straight points early in the half to take a lead and forging a 26-7 run at one point. The Badgers hounded North Carolina State’s star scorer, Julius Hodge, limiting him to 4-of-16 shooting from the field. Wisconsin hit 58 percent of its field goal attempts in the second half.

Alando Tucker hit 9 of 17 shots, scoring 22 efficient points for Wisconsin. Mike Wilkinson hit 5 of 8 shots and scored 17. Wisconsin had enough offense and plenty of defense, limiting NCSU to 38-percent shooting from the field. The Badgers made the Wolfpack pay for not building a much bigger lead at halftime. Bo Ryan, who had reached the Sweet 16 in 2003 but had not been able to come any closer to the Final Four, had finally reached the Elite Eight, moving Wisconsin closer to the center of the national conversation in college basketball.

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.

Sportswriters are taught to find different ways of saying the same thing. The Wisconsin Badgers are teaching a lot of sportswriters how to do their jobs better this basketball season.

When anyone is given the specific job of covering a sports team through a season, that team might fall into predictable patterns. If the patterns are good, the challenge facing a writer, broadcaster, or commentator is made easier by the reality that athletes and coaches are always happier to speak when they’re winning. When the same things happen over and over again, and the “same things” are good, it’s all fun and giggles. When the same things happen over and over again, and the same things are BAD, it’s a nightmare, a long slog through misery and frustration. That is when it becomes harder to write about a team.

The basketball Badgers are currently making it more difficult to write about them. Just how many new insights can a person find when Wisconsin loses a series of games in noticeably familiar ways, falling to 4-4 before the start of the Big Ten Conference schedule?

The bad 3-point shooting? Check. That was still on display Wednesday night against the North Carolina State Wolfpack. The lack of one “climb on my back” scorer who can take charge when the rest of the team struggles? Check. Wisconsin has come no closer to finding that kind of equation-changing scorer. The lack of ball movement? Check. The Badgers shared the ball really well at the Kohl Center against Marquette, but haven’t done so nearly well enough to win away from home.

The 69-54 loss to North Carolina State didn’t reveal a whole lot which was new or surprising about this Wisconsin team. This game was noteworthy for the simple reality that it reinforced what we already knew about this team.

This game reminded us that there is no takeover scorer who can rescue this offense — at least not right now. It once again showed that no one on this team is shooting well enough to open up the court and create better driving lanes which can greatly improve the offense. N.C. State smartly gave Wisconsin 3-point looks and played to stop the drive. The Wolfpack blocked several shots and altered many others. This game also showed us that Wisconsin doesn’t have a point guard athletic enough to beat his man off the dribble and force defenses to help, which in turn creates a higher-quality 3-point shot.

This game showed us that the pieces don’t fit on offense. It also showed that any prolonged struggles from the Wisconsin defense will mean almost-certain defeat. The Badgers allowed 26 points in the first 10 minutes of the second half. You don’t need to be a math major to realize that’s a 52-point scoring pace in a full half of basketball. There’s no way Wisconsin can survive that lack of defense at this particular stage of the team’s development in the 2019-2020 season. Wisconsin has to be a lockdown-level defensive team, a group which can win the grinders Virginia had been winning before the Cavaliers got thumped by Purdue on Wednesday.

Wisconsin has to win games 53-49, at least in early December. Maybe in late January, Wisconsin will be in better position to win a game played in the high 60s or low 70s. Right now, the Badgers have to hold opponents to the low 50s or high 40s. If they don’t, they’re in deep trouble. The past several games established this… and the North Carolina State game did nothing to change that fundamental equation.

Wisconsin was handed its third loss in a row on Wednesday evening, falling to NC State 69-54 in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. Here are our top three takeaways from the game for the Badgers.

Wisconsin can’t get back to the friendly confines of the Kohl Center soon enough.

After a ho-hum start in the first two games of the season against St. Mary’s and Eastern Illinois, it appeared as though Wisconsin’s offense was coming together in the following three contests, especially in the impressive victory over Marquette in which the Badgers seemingly couldn’t miss at times, especially from downtown. A common denominator of those three encouraging performances against McNeese State, Marquette and Green Bay?

They all took place in Madison.

Once the Badgers were forced to hit the road to Brooklyn to take part in the Legends Classic, things quickly unraveled. Wisconsin’s play in the embarrassing losses to Richmond and New Mexico was abysmal to the point that it was near-unwatchable at times. The Badgers shot 39 percent from the floor in those two games, including just 24.5 percent from beyond the arc.

Badger fans who were hoping that Wisconsin would break out of its slump last night in Raleigh were bitterly disappointed, with Bucky going just 21-56 (37.5 percent) from the field overall and just 5-23 (21.7 percent) from three against the Wolfpack. The Badgers didn’t get on the board until the 15:43 mark, and it took a little over half of the first period for them to bury a three.

To make matters worse, Wisconsin’s complicated relationship with the free-throw line reared its ugly head once again, with the Badgers going just 7-15 from the charity stripe.

It will be interesting to see if Wisconsin can get this sputtering offense back on track in Madison on Saturday, but facing an undefeated Indiana squad that just took down No. 17 Florida State earlier this week, Badger fans probably shouldn’t get their hopes up.

Brad Davison couldn’t find a way out of his scoring slump.

It’s probably not a coincidence that Wisconsin’s three consecutive losses have coincided with one of the worst shooting slumps of Davison’s college career.

The junior guard was nowhere to be found against NC State last night, putting up three points and taking only five shots. Davison didn’t make much of an impact elsewhere, either, adding just two assists and three rebounds to his meager scoring total.

As it did with the Badgers as a whole, the Wolfpack did an excellent job defensively on Davison, but it’s possible that the very loud and persistent booing that greeted him whenever he touched the ball throughout the game got into his head a bit and contributed to his struggles.

After last night’s performance, Davison has mustered only 11 points on 3-20 shooting from the floor, including just 2-14 from long range, in Bucky’s last three games. If Wisconsin’s offense is going to start clicking again, it simply needs more from Davison, who has proven himself to be one of the few players on this roster who is capable of scoring consistently.

The aggressiveness from Aleem Ford and Kobe King was encouraging.

King and Ford didn’t exactly light it up from the field (they combined to shoot 42.8 percent) but Badger fans should be encouraged by the aggressiveness they both showed last night. As with Davison, it’s of vital importance that these two emerge as reliable offensive options this season, but both guys have shown a tendency to be timid with the ball in their hands at times throughout their careers.

King’s development, in particular, is crucial to Wisconsin’s success this season. The sophomore guard continues to look like the team’s best and perhaps only option to consistently break down defenses and hunt for his own shot. Again, King’s shots weren’t always going down against the Wolfpack (he had 11 points on 4-11 shooting), but he was getting into the paint at will for much of the contest, and that’s what Wisconsin needs from him moving forward.

While King looked strong at times last night, it was Ford who was Wisconsin’s best player. He was quiet for much of the first half but came out attacking in the second, finishing the game with a team-high 13 points on 5-10 shooting, seven rebounds, a steal and a block.

Ford continues to look like a completely different player from a year ago, flashing exciting inside/out scoring ability and playing with a noticeably higher amount of fire and toughness. Of all the players returning from last season’s roster, he has by far shown the most progress.

The North Carolina State Wolfpack, who face the Wisconsin Badgers on Wednesday night in the Big Ten-ACC Challenge, have been known for making a sneaky run to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament every now and then. The specific details: North Carolina State has made three Sweet 16s in the previous 15 college basketball seasons, once under Herb Sendek and twice under Mark Gottfried.

The three Sweet 16s were never closer than three years apart (2013 and 2016 under Gottfried). They also never came as a seed higher than No. 8. North Carolina State was not an unfamiliar face on the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. If you compare that to Wisconsin’s body of work in the first nine years under Bo Ryan, there is a small to modest degree of similarity. Ryan made three Sweet 16s in his first nine years (with one of them turning into an Elite Eight, interestingly due to a Sweet 16 win against North Carolina State in 2005 in Syracuse). Those Sweet 16s also did not come in consecutive seasons. Wisconsin’s NCAA seeds from 2002 through 2006 were no higher than No. 5.

Fine — those similarities exist. Yet, the larger profiles of the two programs are and have been profoundly different this century. Whereas North Carolina State has endured noticeable NCAA Tournament droughts, Wisconsin is an annual NCAA Tournament team. Whereas Wisconsin eventually moved past the “mid-level-seed” identity under Ryan and became a top-three seed in several NCAA Tournaments, North Carolina State — when it makes the NCAA Tournament — is still a road-team Dance guest. In other words, N.C. State almost always wears the road jerseys of a lower seed in the NCAAs, occupying the 9-12 seed range and occasionally being an 8, which gets a home jersey in round one but not in any subsequent round of the tournament.

N.C. State’s lack of high-end NCAA Tournament seeds is borne out in another substantial difference between the Wolfpack and the Badgers: the number of seasons with single-digit losses. North Carolina State hasn’t had a season with fewer than 10 losses since 1989 under the man himself, Jim Valvano. Wisconsin has had NINE seasons with fewer than 10 losses this century alone.

Imagine yourself in 1989 — when everything about Wisconsin sports was about to change and enter a golden era — saying that Wisconsin would clearly surpass North Carolina State as a program. The arrival of Dick Bennett in 1995 was still six years away. Valvano led N.C. State to the Sweet 16, and the Wolfpack very nearly defeated top-seeded Georgetown with Alonzo Mourning. Yet, it can’t be any plainer: Wisconsin is in much better shape than N.C. State on a larger level.

Only if Kevin Keatts shows substantial proof of a sustained turnaround will the Wolfpack begin to change perceptions and reality in the ACC, and on a national level. This year’s NCSU team has clearly failed to make significant early-season statements. North Carolina State has lost its two most important games of the young season, to Georgia Tech and Memphis. The effort has been there but the execution has not. Yup, sounds like N.C. State. The Sendek and Gottfried teams could be so good when at their best, but the “best” didn’t materialize very often. Playing to the competition, not making the simple play, and enduring prolonged shooting droughts have all been part of the N.C. State portfolio to varying degrees over the past few decades. The 2019-2020 Wolfpack are trying to begin to create a cultural shift in Raleigh.

Wisconsin just got roughed up in Brooklyn. The Badgers do not stand on especially solid footing as they travel to the Carolinas. Yet, Wisconsin’s long-range body of work gives the Badgers the benefit of the doubt. N.C. State is still trying to earn it heading into Wednesday night’s game.