Wisconsin Basketball: Player Analysis from the Badgers Win over Maryland

How did Wisconsin basketball players fare against Maryland?

We’ve looked at how the Wisconsin basketball team did against the Maryland Terrapins in a 70-57 win Saturday night, and what that might mean for their tourney chances, so let’s turn our attention to the players in the game.

Ken Pomeroy‘s algorithm tabbed Vitto Brown for his second straight game MVP. I agreed with him last time, but this time, the Blakely MVP is Zak Showalter.

Showy didn’t play as much as others due to foul trouble, but when he did, he combined terribly efficient offense with good defense to take home the hardware.

Looking at efficiency, Showalter lapped the field on offense, generating nearly 1.9 points/possession, which is like shooting 19-20 from inside the arc with no turnovers.

Ethan Happ did something similar on defense with a 64 Defensive Rating. Happ’s 4 steals and 6 defensive rebounds in 22 minutes contributed mightily to this, but so did his stout, interior position defense against a long Maryland squad. However, that length hurt him on the offensive side, leading him to a below D-1 average performance.

Alex Illikainen was the anchor for the team, last night, with woeful offense, but it didn’t hurt the team too much, as you will see in the second chart below, because he only used 12% of the possessions in the 12 minutes that he was on the floor.

Illikainen contributed -4 points to the final victory margin, which is pretty significant, but Showalter doubled that and turned it on its end, netting 8 points of victory margin for the Badgers. In fact, Illikainen was the only player to have a negative contribution worse than -1, which is a great recipe for a win.

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As you can see, Nigel Hayes didn’t have a great game by this measure, but he is now the 3rd ranked player in the Big Ten, according to Pomeroy’s All-Conference measure. Before the game, I lamented how he was not repeating last year’s performance, which had him as the 4th best player in the conference, and in one game, he turned that around.

This is what we expected going into the season, and Hayes is now delivering. In a quirk of fate, this game also knocked Diamond Stone and Robert Carter out of the Pomeroy All-Conference rankings, which is quite sweet nectar.

Since the Badgers did play against Whitefish Bay Dominican’s own Diamond Stone, let’s take a look at the Maryland Net Points Added.

Stone was not really the problem, but he certainly wasn’t the answer. No player on Maryland was very good in the game, with Rasheed Sulaimon being the only high-minute player to provide positive value. I was annoyed by his antics during the game, but he was the “star” for Maryland.

Jared Nickens was horrible, but Melo Trimble was the real goat. On the season, he has been quite good, but in this game, the Badger backcourt did a fine job against him.

Next: Badgers Must Quickly Set Sights on Michigan State

As always, if you would like me to take a look at anything in particular, please let me know in the comments. Stay tuned to Badger of Honor for more Wisconsin basketball coverage.