2024 - 25 Wisconsin Basketball Thread

[Jim French Stepstool]

2 hours ago, yourout said:

To many turnovers.

It's every coaches' dream to win & yet still have teaching points to get across. Thirteen TOs last week & something like fifteen today. Definitely needs to be cleaned up.

[yourout]

It's such a weird feeling having a badger hoops team that can fill it up like this.

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

This was the stretch they needed to roll through. So far, so good. Hoping they keep it going vs. OSU then split the CA trip (though with UCLA in a total mess, maybe it's time to get greedy).

 

[Jim French Stepstool]

Fun to see the offense cook like they did in the 2nd half. I was really excited to see what Amos turned in tonight. Three rebounds, an assist, two steals & a block. Isn't very good at driving the ball, but he's starting to TRY to. If he can get stronger there's a lot of untapped stuff there.

Overall I think the defense is on the right track to consistency, despite a bit of a struggle early. And I'm just thrilled with the season McGee is having.

For all the good things he does, Janicki goes in for layups as if he's never had the experience of taking it strong vs someone his size & as athletic as him (or moreso). And during his HS days that was probably the case. Teaching point.

When he gets in, Freitag looks overwhelmed & not confident. You could really tell it on his FTs late; it almost looked as if he wanted to get them over with. The jump in competition has been much more of a negative factor than I anticipated. Fortunately save for injuries he isn't needed. Long way to go but a lot of time to acclimate.

If I'm Minny & it's a close game late, I'd lay into anyone on the team that doesn't get the ball in Garcias' hands every time down. That guy is a really tough cover.

[Jim French Stepstool]

5 hours ago, Cool Hand Lucroy said:

This was the stretch they needed to roll through. So far, so good. Hoping they keep it going vs. OSU then split the CA trip (though with UCLA in a total mess, maybe it's time to get greedy).

 

After dealing with playing at Illinois & Rutgers, it doesn't seem to me SC & UCLA should be rough venues to visit. Of course you still need to play well.

Unless I'm forgetting, the last time they visited Pauley Pavilion Bill Walton was in the post.

[Underachiever]

Hopefully there is a Pauley Pavilion left standing. The fires are touching Brentwood. I think UCLA has more important issues to worry about right now.

[Jim French Stepstool]

7 hours ago, Underachiever said:

Hopefully there is a Pauley Pavilion left standing. The fires are touching Brentwood. I think UCLA has more important issues to worry about right now.

I've been keeping an eye on Iowa news. They play at SC Tuesday & UCLA on Friday & no changes as of yet. I imagine the next 24 hours will be crucial. You're correct about UCLA; the Westwood neighborhood is dangerously close to the carnage.

You would think there might be a plan B in a large enough venue (San Diego St; Univ of San Diego) to move the games to if needed, since this is no ordinary road trip & it may be extremely difficult to reschedule later on in the season. Certainly not like taking a one-day detour to Evanston or Minneapolis. Right now it's wait & see, and pray for everyone out there.

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

2 hours ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

I've been keeping an eye on Iowa news. They play at SC Tuesday & UCLA on Friday & no changes as of yet. I imagine the next 24 hours will be crucial. You're correct about UCLA; the Westwood neighborhood is dangerously close to the carnage.

You would think there might be a plan B in a large enough venue (San Diego St; Univ of San Diego) to move the games to if needed, since this is no ordinary road trip & it may be extremely difficult to reschedule later on in the season. Certainly not like taking a one-day detour to Evanston or Minneapolis. Right now it's wait & see, and pray for everyone out there.

Agreed all around.

Basketball terms, USC just won at Illinois, which is a shock result. The B1G is weird this year. Seems like there are only a couple of really good teams (I really only trust MSU and Purdue), a big, messy middle (with Illinois at the top), and then a fair number of bad teams. 

[Jim French Stepstool]

5 hours ago, Cool Hand Lucroy said:

Agreed all around.

Basketball terms, USC just won at Illinois, which is a shock result. The B1G is weird this year. Seems like there are only a couple of really good teams (I really only trust MSU and Purdue), a big, messy middle (with Illinois at the top), and then a fair number of bad teams. 

Outside of Minnesota, I guess it depends on your definition of 'bad'. I think there are a lot of teams---Iowa, Indiana, Rutgers, a couple others---that are definitely capable of looking terrible. But if at some point RUs' freshmen stop playing like freshmen, If Iowa shoots well & guards people anything better than poorly, if Indiana shows interest for 40 minutes, the latter two especially can do damage on a given day. So much is based on coachability & consistency. I was shocked by the USC win too. I think what happened is Illinois won by 39 vs Penn State w/o Jakucionus and felt they could just show up & win. Izzo & Painter don't put up with that. A big part of the reason why their teams are more 'trustworthy'. Gard is in the same mold, just not with the same talent level year in & year out as those two.

[Oxy]

What a comfortable game to watch.

[yourout]

Having kind of a poor second half. 

Way too many turnovers.

[yourout]

This is the worst half they've played in quite a while. 

[yourout]

Bad win. 

Sort of.

[Jim French Stepstool]

Tale of two halves, to be sure. We defended well in the 1st half, but a large part of it was some very sloppy stuff by OSU, lazy screens that wound up being fouls, TOs, settling for jump shots. Thornton got going early in the 2nd half & that was key. The defensive rebounding took a big dip downward in the 2nd half as well. At the end of the day I thought the experience paid off with a couple crucial stops to keep them at arms' length (or by the end, pinkies' length).

Crowl mostly disappeared in the 2nd half but had a huge tapout on the missed FT. If that doesn't happen we might be talking about an L.

The end of a really nice stretch of games for Winter. Hopefully he starts a new streak Saturday.

Oh, and Gard said after the game the last FT by Blackwell was supposed to be a miss. Maybe he should've tried to 'miss' the previous couple 😛.

[Jim French Stepstool]

56 minutes ago, yourout said:

This is the worst half they've played in quite a while. 

OSU really got rolling in the 2nd half. When Thornton is making plays he's one of those guys that makes everyone else better. I didn't like how we stopped drawing fouls. Eventually got into the double bonus but the first 12 minutes of the half lacked patience & purpose. Missed layup by Winter followed by his fumbling a pass for a TO came at a time we could've stemmed their run & didn't. His worst game in quite some time.

[pitchleague]

I gotta be honest.  This season has been great!   I say this because I have hardly watched any of the games.  Those few times I did tune in, they lost.  Badly.

So now the wife and I decided no more watching the games and they’ve done really well!  Coincidence?  Yeah, probably.  But less stress and more “free time” for us not watching the games!

I suppose when it comes to tournament time, I’ll tune in just on principle.

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

Uncomfortably close at the end.

Two things:

1) That's a borderline Q1 win. In fact, Wisconsin winning moved OSU from 29 to 31 in the NET, which takes it from Q1 to Q2. Very well could come back up at some point. Good win, at the end of the day, against a team that hasn't quite logged the wins in line with its computer numbers.

2) I thought Gard managed the foul up 3 scenario perfectly at the end. Really all you can ask of a head coach is to get the strategic choices right, and I think he did.

 

[Underachiever]

2 hours ago, pitchleague said:

I gotta be honest.  This season has been great!   I say this because I have hardly watched any of the games.  Those few times I did tune in, they lost.  Badly.

So now the wife and I decided no more watching the games and they’ve done really well!  Coincidence?  Yeah, probably.  But less stress and more “free time” for us not watching the games!

I suppose when it comes to tournament time, I’ll tune in just on principle.

When you watched they lost...badly? Three point loss to Michigan, six points to Illinois (I'll admit, Illinois was in control, but it was a four point game in the last three minutes). I think only the Marquette game would qualify as losing badly, and UW had the lead at halftime. Other than that, 14 wins. 

It's a fun team to watch, second half of last night's game notwithstanding. Their six wins in this streak have come by 9, 23, 31, 12, 21, and 2.

[Jim French Stepstool]

4 hours ago, Cool Hand Lucroy said:

Uncomfortably close at the end.

Two things:

1) That's a borderline Q1 win. In fact, Wisconsin winning moved OSU from 29 to 31 in the NET, which takes it from Q1 to Q2. Very well could come back up at some point. Good win, at the end of the day, against a team that hasn't quite logged the wins in line with its computer numbers.

2) I thought Gard managed the foul up 3 scenario perfectly at the end. Really all you can ask of a head coach is to get the strategic choices right, and I think he did.

 

I imagine the wins vs Texas & Kentucky helped the NET rank for OSU quite a bit. Yet another B10 team that can play at a pretty high level on a given day. Toward that end-----holy cow did Indiana look horrible vs Illinois. Also stunk up the joint at Iowa & were terrible in a holiday tourney vs Louisville. They've had their moments & can certainly make the tournament. But if I was an IU fan I would be so incredibly sick of Woodson.

Agree re the end-of-game decisions. His subbing at the end was spot-on too, as well as ordering Blackwell to miss the FT. Of course Murphys' Law, the thing went in.

[LouisEly]

On 1/12/2025 at 2:02 PM, Jim French Stepstool said:

You would think there might be a plan B in a large enough venue (San Diego St; Univ of San Diego)

Shouldn't need to go that far.  The Intuit Dome is at least 12 miles from the southern edge of the Palisades fire, and if that is booked... might be able to resurrect the old Forum.  The Crypto.com Arena downtown is 15 miles from the Palisades and Eaton fires.    Long Beach State and the Honda Center in Anaheim would be large enough as well.

Plenty of options, which may be why they haven't rescheduled it yet.

[Jim French Stepstool]

7 hours ago, LouisEly said:

Shouldn't need to go that far.  The Intuit Dome is at least 12 miles from the southern edge of the Palisades fire, and if that is booked... might be able to resurrect the old Forum.  The Crypto.com Arena downtown is 15 miles from the Palisades and Eaton fires.    Long Beach State and the Honda Center in Anaheim would be large enough as well.

Plenty of options, which may be why they haven't rescheduled it yet.

You're right; I was going on the premise of a larger portion of the city being in danger by that time. Fortunately that doesn't seem to be happening. I thought the Pyramid (LB State) only seats 4-5 grand. The rest would work though, including the Galen Center at USC where UW plays on Saturday.

I didn't know the Forum was still standing. Interesting.

[Jim French Stepstool]

USC today, and I'm not overly optimistic. Not that we don't match up OK with them, but it's a road game--a faaaarrrr away one---and SC is probably playing their best ball right now. If Klesmit is getting close to 100% & knocks a few down, that could be an X factor.

I heard the team spent time volunteering at a food pantry after getting to LA. Very cool.

[Oxy]

Great half...again. Can we avoid the typical let down in defensive intensity in the 2nd half?

The offense will basically take care of itself, PARTICULARLY if we avoid TOs.

[Underachiever]

10 minutes ago, Oxy said:

Great half...again. Can we avoid the typical let down in defensive intensity in the 2nd half?

The offense will basically take care of itself, PARTICULARLY if we avoid TOs.

I don’t feel that it’s an intensity issue on D. I think refs call second halves differently in every single game

[yourout]

10 minutes ago, Underachiever said:

I don’t feel that it’s an intensity issue on D. I think refs call second halves differently in every single game

Indeed. 

Uncalled moving screen followed by a phantom and one on the same posession early in the half.