The Wisconsin Badgers have a problem, and that is obvious to anyone who's watching. There is a lot of blame to go around: The defense, the bigs, the struggling shooting, and many other reasons. All of those are legit reasons, but they don't get to the core of it all. You can take all the problems and boil them all the way down to simply one thing.
The problem for Wisconsin is simple: Greg Gard's roster construction left him ZERO room for error. If one of Austin Rapp, Nick Boyd, Andrew Rohde, or even Braeden Carrington didn’t work out, this team is in trouble. There is no room for even one of them to miss as a weapon, and that was foolish.
Boyd, Rohde, and Carrington haven't been amazing, but they've been fine in the role they were given. It's Rapp that's struggled to adapt to the Wisconsin offense or defense. He's not a prototypical big, and he's being exposed. That's created a big problem that has left the team trying to compensate and often falling apart.
Wisconsin lost to Purdue 89-73 and it only further revealed the problem
Related: If the opportunity was there, Greg Gard would add a player this season
The Badgers have to play a true freshman big in place of Rapp because Rapp simply isn't good enough to start or be dependable. That's created a serious problem, for while Aleksas Bieliauskas has been better than Rapp, he's still young and has really no reliable offensive tools developed yet. This forces Winter to play a little bit more aggressively and for more minutes. It also pushes Boyd and Blackwell into pressing.
To cover for the struggle in the paint, the Badgers shoot threes, and against Purdue, they couldn't find the bottom of the net. They went 4-25 from three against the Boilermakers.
There's no one else on the bench to turn to, and that's the problem. Last season may have taught Greg Gard the wrong lesson. He went to the portal and grabbed Camren Hunter, John Tonje, and Xavier Amos, who once again needed all three to hit. But only one did: Tonje. However, the bench was so much better than expected.
Making it so the starters could settle into their roles and play without pressing. However, the bench this year has nothing, especially from the bigs, but really all the way through. That's a problem.