Now healthy can Wisconsin Basketball return to a place they’ve become accustomed to, the NCAA Tournament? A healthy D’Mitrik Trice will be the key.
The Wisconsin Badgers have been a staple of the NCAA Tournament over the past 20 years. The team had made 19 straight tournaments since 1999. In that time the Badgers had an appearance in the National Championship game, three Final Fours, four Elite Eights, and 10 trips to the Sweet Sixteen, but that streak came to an end last season.
The team was beset by key injuries to freshman Kobe King and sophomore D’Mitrik Trice, who both had their season end after 10 games. Even star freshman Brad Davison underwent shoulder surgery after the season.
With forward Ethan Happ returning for his senior season, coach Greg Gard and his crew are ready to start another streak of tournament appearances.
While players like Brevin Pritzl filled in admirably in the absence of Trice and King, the Badgers finished just 15-18 and 7-11 in the Big Ten. While the defense has always been a staple of Wisconsin basketball and it was very good last season, holding teams to 66 points and 10 of the team’s 18 losses came by 10 points or less. Coming off a trip to the Sweet Sixteen in 2017, what wasn’t Wisconsin-like in comparison to that season was the struggles the team had putting the ball in the basket and more importantly rebounding, a stat that helped define Badger basketball.
In 2017 they scored over 72 points per game while grabbing over 12 offensive rebounds and 37 total boards per game, all in the top 97 nationally. Last season, however, the offensive efficiency dropped to 66.8 points and they grabbed just nine offensive boards per game and the 30 rebounds per game was 341st nationally, near the worst in Division I.