Wisconsin Basketball: 2023-24 season preview for the Badgers
Schedule
Wisconsin has never been a program to shy away from scheduling tough in the non-conference, but they took things up a level this fall. The schedule gets tough within the first week, as the Badgers welcome a Top 10 Tennessee team to town on Friday, November 10. They’ll follow that up with their first road contest, also against a power conference team, as they face Kim English and the new-look Providence Friars the following Tuesday.
The Fort Myers Tip-Off will give the Badgers an opportunity to prove themselves on the national stage, and they have a real shot to leave the event victorious. Virginia poses a tough test to open up the event, but the rest of the field is dotted with questions. SMU and West Virginia are the other two teams in the “Beach” division, a pair of programs in obvious transition mode.
The December slate could tell us whether Wisconsin is ready to challenge for league supremacy in the upcoming Big Ten slate or not. The “White-Out” game with Marquette will be one of the most hyped intrastate matchups of all-time, with the Golden Eagles likely to enter Kohl Center as a Top 5 team. It’s the beginning of a brutal three-game stretch run for Wisconsin that also includes their league opener, at Michigan State, and a trip across the country to face Arizona. Even winning just two of those games could provide the Badgers some much-needed momentum before they embark on the meat of a Big Ten schedule.
As things stand today, the non-conference slate includes four teams ranked in the Top 12 nationally, plus a pair of quality programs in Providence and Virginia. When you add in a conference slate that is going to be tough year-in, year-out, I don’t think it’s an overreaction to say this is one of the tougher schedules in the country in 2023-24. But, you could look at it a couple different ways if you’re Wisconsin. On one hand, this is a perilous slate of games that will tell us exactly where Gard’s program is at in Year Eight. On the other, it provides plenty of opportunity for this team to boost their resume and ensure they don’t end up on the wrong side of the bubble this time around.