2023-24 Wisconsin Basketball season thread

[yourout]

Tough stretch.

Really taking Storr away

[RedStickBrew]

Ohio State has been getting the ball in the lane this half and drawing those fouls. Badgers are shooting a bunch of threes and missing 

[yourout]

Essegian definitely needs to remake his body in the next off season.

[yourout]

Someone's got to make a shot.

[RedStickBrew]

A healthy aggressive Crowl would be nice here

[yourout]

Competent officiating would be nice.

[RedStickBrew]

Klesmit!

[yourout]

Sweet jesus. The guy completely grabbed Wahl when he was going after the rebound

[RedStickBrew]

That was a moving screen

[yourout]

And a completely illegal screen gets a foul on Chucky

[yourout]

Nice effort overcoming some really awful officiating down the stretch.

[RedStickBrew]

Really good win tonight

[Oxy]

2 hours ago, yourout said:

Bad matchups for Klesmit.

This aged poorly.

Klesmit is so awesome.  Gets 0 credit...why? I have no idea.  He's our best defender and on offense basically single handedly won two of the biggest games this year (Marq/@OSU).

The guy is pure nails.

[yourout]

5 minutes ago, Oxy said:

This aged poorly.

Klesmit is so awesome.  Gets 0 credit...why? I have no idea.  He's our best defender and on offense basically single handedly won two of the biggest games this year (Marq/@OSU).

The guy is pure nails.

He sure turned it on down the stretch.

[Playing Catch]

4 minutes ago, Oxy said:

This aged poorly.

Klesmit is so awesome.  Gets 0 credit...why? I have no idea.  He's our best defender and on offense basically single handedly won two of the biggest games this year (Marq/@OSU).

The guy is pure nails.

Max is awesome, no one has said otherwise. But he's gunna need to continue to take advantage of being the 4th defensive priority for the Badgers to keep winning these games. He's like all of those Purdue guys who are clearly down the pecking order, but end up their 2nd leading scorer.

He'll be All-B1G defensive team. Is that enough credit?

[Oxy]

3 minutes ago, Playing Catch said:

Max is awesome, no one has said otherwise. But he's gunna need to continue to take advantage of being the 4th defensive priority for the Badgers to keep winning these games. He's like all of those Purdue guys who are clearly down the pecking order, but end up their 2nd leading scorer.

He'll be All-B1G defensive team. Is that enough credit?

Maybe....It just seems like everybody LOVED Josh Gasser right from the start... from my view Max is JG's clone, but the fanbase seems to clamor for more CE3 instead🤔

[Playing Catch]

I'm looking around other game threads... am I the only one that thought this game was officiated really well by a couple of disciplined defenses?

[Playing Catch]

Just now, Oxy said:

Maybe....It just seems like everybody LOVED Josh Gasser right from the start... from my view Max is JG's clone, but the fanbase seems to clamor for more CE3 instead🤔

Gasser had a hard time getting out of the shadows, too.

[Jim French Stepstool]

The 1st half really started to feel like one of those road games where you're down by a dozen or so going into the break. OSU was hitting the boards hard, flying around on defense & making some fairly well-defended shots. Then Battle goes full-blown Tominaga for 2-3 minutes. What was interesting to me was in the 2nd half we (Mostly Klesmit) took Battle away while they did the same to Storr. That's usually going to be advantage UW, when you're talking about ancillary guys having to step up. I have no clue how Klesmit can do the job he did on Battle, then have enough sauce left to fill the hoop the way he did in the final 6-7 minutes. Big salute.

Kudos to Winter too, being asked to fill a little bigger role with Crowl banged up. The defensive chops aren't there every time down the floor. But for a 1st-year guy playing in the post, I'm impressed. He looks to me like he's fulfilling the cliche of just getting 1% better every day.

Two road wins in the league already. That's sweet.

[yourout]

6 minutes ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

The 1st half really started to feel like one of those road games where you're down by a dozen or so going into the break. OSU was hitting the boards hard, flying around on defense & making some fairly well-defended shots. Then Battle goes full-blown Tominaga for 2-3 minutes. What was interesting to me was in the 2nd half we (Mostly Klesmit) took Battle away while they did the same to Storr. That's usually going to be advantage UW, when you're talking about ancillary guys having to step up. I have no clue how Klesmit can do the job he did on Battle, then have enough sauce left to fill the hoop the way he did in the final 6-7 minutes. Big salute.

Kudos to Winter too, being asked to fill a little bigger role with Crowl banged up. The defensive chops aren't there every time down the floor. But for a 1st-year guy playing in the post, I'm impressed. He looks to me like he's fulfilling the cliche of just getting 1% better every day.

Two road wins in the league already. That's sweet.

Winter has a really bright future ahead.

Feels a lot like a very young John Leur and a bit like Frank without quite as good ball handling skills.

[Jim French Stepstool]

5 minutes ago, Oxy said:

Maybe....It just seems like everybody LOVED Josh Gasser right from the start... from my view Max is JG's clone, but the fanbase seems to clamor for more CE3 instead🤔

IMO Max is a little less athletic than Gasser, but I'm nitpicking. That's a pretty good comp.

Gasser was on some ultra-successful teams while in Maxs' first year here the team fell short of the tourney. It might be nothing more than that.

Folks should know by now why Klesmit plays over Essegian. And I'm an Essegian fan.

[yourout]

9 minutes ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

IMO Max is a little less athletic than Gasser, but I'm nitpicking. That's a pretty good comp.

Gasser was on some ultra-successful teams while in Maxs' first year here the team fell short of the tourney. It might be nothing more than that.

Folks should know by now why Klesmit plays over Essegian. And I'm an Essegian fan.

I think the lack of team depth last year allowed Essegian to be forced into a bigger role than he would have normally been on a badger team that had more depth. And while his scoring was very necessary last year he's going to need another year to work on his body before he really has a chance to become a more complete player. He's put on weight but it doesn't look like it was necessarily good weight.

[Jim French Stepstool]

3 minutes ago, yourout said:

I think the lack of team depth last year allowed the Essegian to be forced into a bigger role than he would have normally been on a badger team that had more depth. And while his scoring was very necessary last year he's going to need another year to work on his body before he really has a chance to become a more complete player. He's put on weight but it doesn't look like it was necessarily good weight.

I agree. Not a lot of opportunities for Gard to pick & choose his spots last season. They get all of 3 games out of Jacobi Neath before he has to pack it in, so that leaves Jordan Davis & Isaac Lindsey for competition. I think he's slowly trending upward, but the PT last season was sort of "fools' gold" for sure.

[stoutdude04]

11 hours ago, Playing Catch said:

I'm looking around other game threads... am I the only one that thought this game was officiated really well by a couple of disciplined defenses?

I thought it was pretty bad in the 2nd half.  Off the top of my head I recall 3 calls/no calls all against Bucky.  The out of bounds of OSU leg, Wahl getting his arm pulled going for a rebound, and the call against Chucky on the screen.  There were a few others where I thought...that could be a foul.  Though, I am typically all for letting them play, which I thought the refs did in the 1st half.

[Playing Catch]

6 hours ago, stoutdude04 said:

I thought it was pretty bad in the 2nd half.  Off the top of my head I recall 3 calls/no calls all against Bucky.  The out of bounds of OSU leg, Wahl getting his arm pulled going for a rebound, and the call against Chucky on the screen.  There were a few others where I thought...that could be a foul.  Though, I am typically all for letting them play, which I thought the refs did in the 1st half.

I guess I'd have to watch it again, I just always know going into a B1G road game that the road team is gunna get hosed a few times. I just don't like it when the Badgers get hosed AND they get into foul trouble, or AND there's a big discrepancy in foul shots (when both teams have about the same number of fouls). That's when I feel like the fix is in. The slanted calls/no calls in favor of OSU didn't result in either of these events, so I felt fine.

I usually reserve my hatred of refereeing for those games when the Badgers play against an aggressive defense predicated on forcing TOs. It's THOSE games that drive me nuts, because the Badgers will get called for ticky-tack stuff while the aggro-team gets away with murder.