Wisconsin Basketball: Badgers set for the future

Wisconsin basketball went from 9-9 to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16.

What a roller coaster season it was for the Wisconsin Badgers.

Related Story: Notre Dame uses clutch defense to upend Wisconsin

Coming off back to back Final Fours, the Badgers returned just two starters in Bronson Koenig and Nigel Hayes. Expectations were still high, though, as they started the season ranked 17th in the country.

However, those expectations were dashed quickly when they lost to Western Illinois, in Madison, in the first game of the season.

To make matters even worse, Bo Ryan, the program’s longtime head coach, stepped down after a December 15 victory over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

Greg Gard, one of Ryan’s top assistants, took over as the interim head coach, but the season continued to spiral downward for the Badgers.

On January 12, they lost to the lowly Northwestern Wildcats, who have never made the NCAA Tournament in the history of their program. Their record was just 9-9 and it was looking as if the NCAA Tournament would be Wisconsin-less for the first time since the 1997-98 season.

Finally, something clicked. After that loss to the Wildcats of Northwestern, Wisconsin went 13-4 to finish out the season, earned themselves a seven-seed in the NCAA Tournament and upset two-seeded Xavier en route to the Sweet 16.

And that late season success has turned into a huge positive for Gard. He was hired as their full-time coach early in March, agreeing to a five-year deal that was met with much approval from loads of former Badgers:

Now that the season is over for Wisconsin, after a heart-breaking loss to Notre Dame in the Sweet 16, there are still a few question marks for this team. They only had one graduating senior, Jordan Smith, and he only appeared in eight games this season. However, junior forward Hayes, arguably the team’s best player, could still leave for the NBA Draft.

Regardless of what Hayes does, the Badgers have set themselves up for a bright future with both the players that have been brought into the fold and in locking up Gard for the future.

And they should go into next season as the Big Ten favorites, even if Hayes decides to go to the NBA Draft. Here’s why:

The freshmen

Here’s a list of the four freshmen in Big Ten history to average 12 points and seven rebounds per game in conference play as a freshman:

Provided by Sports-Reference.com/CBB: View Original Table

So Ethan Happ finds himself in pretty good company on this list. Also, notice the steals. Yes, Happ averaged well over two steals per game in conference play this season. He has such a unique skill-set for someone that sits at 6’8″.

These aren’t “empty” stats, as they say, either. Happ had the best defensive rating on the Badgers by a mile. He sat at 90.7, and the closest rotation player to him was Charlie Thomas at 98.1. The highest-ranked starter, other than Happ, on that list is Vitto Brown at just over 100.

I really hate making this comparison but Happ’s inside game really reminds me quite a bit of Frank Kaminsky. He likes to catch at the elbows and drive by his man, and once he gets inside, he pivots and fakes his way into a layup. He’s not quite a great jump-shooter yet like Kaminsky was, but Brown plans on changing that:

Between Happ, Thomas, Khalil Iverson, and Alex Illikainen, freshmen played 56 percent of the minutes for the Badgers this year. A lot of them, at times, looked lost. At other times, they looked pretty solid, and it’s rare that freshmen get such a great chance to contribute right off of the bat when they weren’t top recruits (it should be noted that Happ isn’t a true freshman, as he did have a redshirt season).

This doesn’t even include Brevin Pritzl, a freshman guard whose season was lost to injury. Pritzl was the highest regarded of the incoming Badger freshmen this year, and has drawn comparisons to another guard out of his high school, Matt Thomas. His knock-down three-point shooting would have been perfect for a Badger team that shot just 35 percent from three on the season.

Brown proved himself to be a very good player

Heading into the month of February, Brown was averaging eight points per game and shooting about 1.5 threes per game (and shooting only 27 percent on those threes). People like me, who like to overreact, were calling for Brown to be benched.

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He was an inefficient frontcourt player that jacked up mid-range jumpers and wasn’t a particularly great rebounder. At that point in the season, it seemed like a long-shot that the Badgers would be playing any meaningful games in March and it made more sense for freshmen like Illikainen and Thomas to get experience over Brown, a junior.

Then, it seems as if Gard pulled Brown aside and just told him to let the threes fly.

From the beginning of February until the end of the season, Brown not only averaged almost 12 points per game, but he was also shooting well over four threes per game while connecting at a rate of 48 percent!

As for next season, unless Gard put Brown into a machine and morphed him into Ben Brust, I wouldn’t fully expect Brown to continue shooting 48 percent from three. At the same time, he’s shown enough for me to believe he’s much better than a 27 percent shooter.

There were times in February and March where Brown looked like the Badgers’ best player, and certainly their second-best shooter behind Koenig. And he hit some huge shots in March:

Over 85 percent of Brown’s shots this season came outside of the paint. That’s not really ideal for a power forward.

However with Happ living in the paint, it’s huge to have a guy like Brown spacing the floor so Happ can operate with little threat of a help defender coming over. And if the defender does come over, you best bet Brown will be knocking down the open shot.

Next: Final Four Preview

Oh, and he also has one of my favorite nicknames in college basketball: Downtown Vitto Brown!!