Tag: Purdue Basketball

When the news is very bad, there is no point in pretending the news is only moderately bad or slightly bad or possibly bad. No, it’s very bad.

The news is very bad for the Wisconsin Badgers not because they lost to the Purdue Boilermakers on Friday night in West Lafayette. Had Wisconsin played a 58-57 game and failed to make the last shot, the Badgers would have played a game largely in line with what we have seen the past few weeks. The limitations of the team would have persisted, but so would the strengths. We know Wisconsin has a relatively low ceiling, but the encouraging part of the past few weeks is that the Badgers had raised their floor.

Wisconsin did get whacked a week ago by Michigan State, but that was Michigan State. Getting drilled by a Tom Izzo team in East Lansing is expected to happen. For the most part, the version of Wisconsin we had seen since Dec. 28 at Tennessee had shored up its defense and had not been kicked around. That Michigan State game was an exception, an outlier. Wisconsin’s regular performance was much steadier and more dependable than it had been in the first 10 games of the season without Micah Potter. The Badgers were never going to dazzle; the key point to make about their improvement from Dec. 28 through Jan. 21 is that they minimized their weaknesses.

Friday against Purdue, the Badgers looked a lot like the weak team which had no clue on the road against ordinary opponents such as New Mexico, Richmond, and North Carolina State. Getting thrashed by Michigan State wasn’t an indication of erosion. Getting drubbed in a 19-point loss to a 10-9 Purdue team — in a game the Badgers once trailed by 28 — offers no guarantees, but it DOES carry the possibility that this team is in trouble heading to Iowa City for a Jan. 27 game against the Iowa Hawkeyes on Monday.

Wisconsin had dramatically improved on the road in the first half of January. Once again, a road loss at Michigan State didn’t show the Badgers had lost their way in road games. This game, however, represents a definite regression from the standard UW set in the first two weeks of January.

What is also very disappointing and alarming: The balanced offense against Nebraska now looks a lot more like the product of playing Nebraska, not any sort of epiphany the Badgers experienced. The hope was that playing a softer opponent could cultivate confidence in role players which would carry into this game against Purdue.

Nope. It was just the opposite. Wisconsin scored just 15 points in the first half and was thoroughly embarrassed.

We’ll have more on this game on Saturday, but the initial reaction: The news is very bad. There is no point in trying to sugarcoat it.

We have noted that this next four-game sequence is very important for the Wisconsin Badgers. Within these four games, however, Wisconsin faces the more immediate task of making sure it at least gets a split of upcoming road games at Purdue on Friday and then Iowa on Monday.

I talk to Badger fans on Twitter and Facebook (mostly Twitter). When discussing the next four games — at Purdue, at Iowa, home versus Michigan State, at Minnesota — the general response I have received is that a 2-2 split of the four games would be fine. Not great or spectacular, but fine. Phrased differently, a 2-2 split of the next four games would solidify Wisconsin’s place in the NCAA Tournament, whereas a 1-3 mark could knock down the team’s seeding position and create a little more uncertainty about the team heading into the middle of February, with a whole month still left before the Big Ten Tournament. A 2-2 record is certainly not Wisconsin’s goal for these four games — 3-1 is the goal, with 4-0 being a wonderful thing to shoot for — but 2-2 would be a lot better than 1-3. A 2-2 record in these four games would feel like survival, enduring the worst of the Big Ten slate and still standing at the end of it.

I have already given away part of the game in this respect. I have already given you a sense of why this Friday game against Purdue matters a lot. However, I haven’t told the whole story just yet.

Here is the remainder of the story, filling in the added details about why this game matters a lot:

When any team in any sport needs to do well in a four-game sequence or a similarly compressed number of games (in pro sports, a best-of-seven series, for example), getting the first game in that sequence buys time for the rest of the sequence. A classic example of this was the Golden State Warriors winning Game 1 of the 2015 NBA Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Warriors were outplayed by the Cavs in that game, and on a larger level, Golden State was outplayed in each of the first three games by the Cavs in that series. The Warriors were consistently flummoxed by Cleveland and everything LeBron James was doing.

Yet: Because the Warriors scratched out that ugly Game 1 win, somehow, they were still in striking distance entering Game 4, instead of being down 3-0. When the Warriors, on their fourth try, finally made the adjustments they needed to make, and finally got the breakthrough performance from Andre Iguodala which made all the difference for them in the series, they were back on track. Winning Game 1 bought them time and smoothed the path for them in the series.

Wisconsin and every other college basketball team will not play a best-of-seven series, but in this four-game stretch, it remains important for Wisconsin to win the first game. If UW wins at Purdue on Friday, the pressure is off for Monday at Iowa. It doesn’t make that game less significant, but it does make that game less urgent. A loss at Purdue puts a lot more urgency into the Iowa game for many obvious reasons, the chief one being that Wisconsin would risk starting 0-2 in this four-game bundle, which dramatically elevates the chances of going 1-3 and leaves open the possibility of going 0-4, which would be a true disaster and put UW on the NCAA Tournament bubble.

A win at Purdue immediately calms the waters and lets the Badgers know that even if they lose to Iowa and Michigan State, they can still go 2-2 with a win at Minnesota. Wisconsin would get three bites at the apple in order to reach 2-2 if it gets this first game at Purdue. The Badgers will shape this four-game stretch in a context of opportunity.

If the Badgers lose, they will shape this four-game sequence in a context of burden and pressure.

That’s the fuller meaning of the Purdue game. Let’s see how it all plays out.

In the first 10 games of this college basketball season, the Wisconsin Badgers were consistent… in being inconsistent. The Badgers displayed obvious patterns, but those patterns were marked by their volatility. UW played great at home, horrible away from home en route to a 5-5 start through 10 games. Since Micah Potter came aboard, Wisconsin has not become a juggernaut or an elite powerhouse, but the Badgers have certainly developed a much more recognizable and unified personality, compared to the Jekyll-and-Hyde identity of the first 10 games.

Wisconsin, since the arrival of Potter, has become a very steady and competent defensive team with just enough offense to win most of the time. This is what the Badgers generally are. This is what they are likely to remain. They will score in the high 50s or low 60s most nights. They will usually hold opponents in the mid-50s. They will play close games. Nebraska was an exception because of how bad the Huskers are this season. The Illinois home game was an exception; Wisconsin will usually play much better defense in the Kohl Center. Generally, you know what you’re going to get with the Micah Potter Badgers, the team we have seen since the Dec. 28 game against Tennessee in Knoxville.

You do not know what you’re going to get with the team Wisconsin faces Friday night in Mackey Arena.

The Purdue Boilermakers have been all over the map this season. The famous Hollywood sex symbol of the early 20th century, Mae West, left behind this unforgettable quote: “When I’m good I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better,” a declaration for anyone who enjoyed getting into trouble.

That’s not Purdue. When the Boilermakers are good, they are very, very good. They absolutely demolished Virginia, the defending national champions, and Michigan State, the first-place team in the Big Ten, in a pair of supreme blowouts. When they are bad, though, they are AWFUL, as shown in a recent home blowout loss to Purdue and, for that matter, a road blowout loss to Purdue in which they scored only 37 points.

Whereas Wisconsin has become a steady if unspectacular team, Purdue remains locked in the uncertain world of a team which simply can’t impose a specific template on a game with any degree of dependability. The Boilermakers are 10-9 overall, 3-5 in the Big Ten, and just 1-5 on the road. Whereas Wisconsin has found ways to win Big Ten road games against solid opponents, Purdue hasn’t gotten to that point yet. Purdue’s only road win is at Ohio University of the MAC. The Boilermakers got pounded at Nebraska by 14 points. The gap between their best selves and their worst is as wide as the Grand Canyon.

Appreciate what Wisconsin has done over the past month. The Badgers haven’t solved all their problems or fixed all their weaknesses, but they certainly have improved by leaps and bounds. Purdue, on the other hand, plays its best game every now and then but has largely been lost at sea this season, with no course correction.

Wisconsin is more likely than Purdue to play a steady and consistent game; the Badgers, though, have to be ready for the best version of the Boilermakers to emerge Friday night. Such is the unpredictability of facing an erratic opponent.