Wisconsin Basketball: An Ugly Afternoon at the Kohl Center

Wisconsin basketball had an atrocious start to the Big Ten season losing 83-58 to unranked The Ohio State at the Kohl Center.

The young Wisconsin basketball season and team had an unsightly beginning to the conference slate on Saturday afternoon.  The Badgers were dominated seemingly from the opening moments.

As a result, Bucky sinks to 3-5 on the season and has a lot of work to do to be competitive this season.  We’ll worry about the consecutive NCAA streak at a later date.

Because right now, there are some more pressing problems.  If those don’t get fixed we’ll be struggling to secure an NIT berth.

The Badgers lack an sort of offensive identity

Touch the post, swing the ball, drive-and-kick, no turnovers, the best shot not the first shot.  That jumble of words I think fairly accurately captures the Wisconsin offensive flow for the last like 20 years.

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Unfortunately, very little of that is present with this squad.  This season it’s too reliant on individual Ethan Happ brilliance.  Of course, opposing teams know that.  The Buckeyes tossed an array of traps and double (sometimes even triple) teams to frustrate him.

Too little ball movement and movement off the ball left the big guy stranded.  In the end, the Badgers were 19/49 from the floor (10/27 from three) with 10 assists against 13 turnovers.

Happ was just 2/6 shooting and finished with only seven points. Khalil Iverson’s finishing leaves a lot to be desired as he was 0/5 on the game.

It’s clear Wisconsin basketball is struggling to generate offense and appear to not have many ideas.

The Wisconsin defense is making life too easy for the opposition

So credit The Ohio State for making shots.  But when a team shoots 31/47 (66 percent) you have to charge some of that to poor defense in front of them.  In addition, the Buckeyes were 7/13 from deep as they hurt Wisconsin everywhere.

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Notably, The Ohio State recorded 19 assists on its 31 made baskets.  That demonstrates how effective the visitors were at exploiting gaps in Wisconsin’s defensive rotation.  That led to clean looks and easy baskets.

A lack of communication on screens was a problem.  At times that gave the Buckeyes good iso match ups to exploit in addition to open shots.

Wisconsin has to dramatically tighten its defense if it’s going to remain competitive.  Especially with a sputtering offense.

Next: 10 Bold Predictions for Badger Basketball Season

The season isn’t loss.  But things have to change quickly for an in experienced Badger team to not only get some wins, but also play competitive basketball.