Wisconsin Basketball 2025-26

[Jim French Stepstool]

Jack Janicki is unavailable. He had wrist surgery & there's hope he could return before the end of the season, but if he does it'll be awhile. His defensive versatility will be missed. Sunday for example, he'd be more than a capable matchup for either of Iowa's two double-digit scorers, Stirtz & Banks. Carrington, Blackwell & Rohde have the ability to guard the same spots on the floor at a high level as well; they'll need to.

At first glance this may mean more minutes for Hayden Jones, who mostly played well in Columbus. But Bieliauskas & Garlock were ineffective that day & Rapp sat out so Jones played as a bit of an undersized four. And Iowa has 6 or 7 people in the rotation who can take you beyond the 3PT line & do damage, so we'll see.

[RedStickBrew]

Statistically, the first half was really even in all major categories. Badgers need to step it up on the defensive end the second half. 

[Jim French Stepstool]

Iowa plays at a slower pace but scores at a pretty good clip. Watching them operate on offense you can see why. The screening, off the ball movement & precision passing is very impressive, and had UW a step slow until we seemed to adjust a handful of minutes in.

Actually saw a rare post up (and finish) from Winter in the 1st half. He has an edge down low; might need to see more of that.

Blackwell again taking himself out with two fouls, although this time the charge was the 1st foul. Hopefully his presence is felt from here on out.

Rohde dug deep defensively & made a couple great defensive plays late in the half. That would be a nice lead for everyone to follow.

[Jim French Stepstool]

13 minutes ago, RedStickBrew said:

Statistically, the first half was really even in all major categories. Badgers need to step it up on the defensive end the second half. 

Iowa made some not-too-easy looks, and I thought we looked better defensively in the final 8-10 minutes of the half. But overall yeah, need to put a stamp on things on that end.

[yourout]

This is not Fran's Hawkeyes.

[yourout]

Also no home cooking so far 

[RedStickBrew]

6 minutes ago, yourout said:

This is not Fran's Hawkeyes.

I wish we were facing one of Fran’s Swiss cheese defensive teams today. 
 

I also miss the inevitable and amusing frantrum. 

[yourout]

Outside of the clinker at OSU

Bucky looks legit.

[Jim French Stepstool]

38 minutes ago, yourout said:

This is not Fran's Hawkeyes.

I mentioned awhile back how rough it is facing Indiana now, because you can't just wait around for them to do something dumb. Same with Iowa, and Minnesota for that matter. McCollum really makes Iowa tough to beat. Switching on Stirtz was a pretty good idea since they don't have a big size advantage inside, but he still makes so many good decisions that he still gets a lot done.

 

[Jim French Stepstool]

43 minutes ago, yourout said:

Also no home cooking so far 

The Rapp charge in the 1st half certainly was questionable. Stirtz slid in well, but it was so-so at best IMO. The call probably looked worse because it came on the heels of Rapps' foul on the blocked shot, which was a horrible call.

[Jim French Stepstool]

1 hour ago, RedStickBrew said:

Badgers need to step it up on the defensive end the second half. 

Mission accomplished, against a team that runs some really good stuff in the half court.

[RedStickBrew]

42 minutes ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

Mission accomplished, against a team that runs some really good stuff in the half court.

That was a good Iowa team. Badgers used their height advantage pretty well too. And Iowa didn’t shoot quite as well in the second half. But I thought the intensity on D improved in the second half for the Badgers and they were able to take over and close it out. 

[Jim French Stepstool]

Two more random thoughts:

I was concerned about Hayden Jones on the defensive end, especially vs a team like this. But to me he appeared to be mostly solid. Maybe Carrington more-or-less replaces Janicki as a defensive stopper off the bench, but Jones has nice size and reach & for two games in a row now, so far so good.

Winter, on the switches where he's stuck out on the perimeter checking a guard, has been better than I've ever dreamed he would be. I once wondered if he could guard 4's. Nevermind. His lateral movement for a man his size is very impressive.

[yourout]

18 minutes ago, RedStickBrew said:

That was a good Iowa team. Badgers used their height advantage pretty well too. And Iowa didn’t shoot quite as well in the second half. But I thought the intensity on D improved in the second half for the Badgers and they were able to take over and close it out. 

The first 5 minutes of the game was basically a layoup drill for Iowa but Bucky adjusted nicely and seem to be better able to anticipate the passes.

[ErnieRilesBrianGiles]

I only saw the highlights, but is Austin Rapp the "Giannis" of the Badgers? Whenever he's not injured and plays, they win!

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

Yeah, I thought Iowa played very well, but maybe got sucked in by a fool's gold first half. They didn't have much of a shot to keep up with that tempo, and the Badgers ran away with it in the 4th quarter. It also helps when you've got Boyd AND Blackwell. Stirtz is great, but Iowa is looking for a 2nd and 3rd scorer each night, and their victories are dependent on finding one. When Boyd has the game he did, and Rapp and Winter both get multiple triples, it's going to be tough to beat the Badgers anywhere, let alone at the Kohl.

Second Jones getting some nice minutes. With Janicki hurt, he's going to have to put in some good stretches. Going 3-2 in a stretch of 5 straight Q1 games (we'll see if Iowa hangs onto that as the season ends) is a very good result. Minnesota hovering around 75 in the NET, and that's currently Q1 too, which makes the Badgers 5-7 in those games. If they grab one or two more and avoid bad losses, that should avoid the 8-9 lines by a ways, especially when you consider the quality of wins. I'm comfortable saying this is a tournament team, and they've finally got the profile to match. 

 

[Jim French Stepstool]

4 hours ago, Cool Hand Lucroy said:

 Stirtz is great, but Iowa is looking for a 2nd and 3rd scorer each night, and their victories are dependent on finding one. 

 

He sure is. But I agree we definitely did a nice job of keeping others from getting overly involved. Folgueiras hurt us some & I thought Sage played pretty well, but guys not named Stirtz went 4-18 from 3pt range & had only one long hit in the 2nd half--none in the last 15:30. Gard usually finds ways to tweak things successfully if the early defense is leaky. That happened again today.

[Samurai Bucky]

Wasn't that the second dunk that Winter missed in the last couple of games?  Yikes...

Rohde has his one head-shaker of a pass that he does every game.  I'll make sure that is on my bingo card for every game.  He did work hard on the defensive side, though.  Stirtz was going to get his points, and Bucky did a good job preventing others from being too production.

Just when a think the Badgers are going to (nearly) run the table, they have a clunker like against OSU.  Hopefully they play more consistently.  JB did not have his typical game which is ok.  Hopefully Boyd can stay consistent.  I know the first goal of any opponent will be to stop Boyd.  That is when JB steps up and goes for 25.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

[Jim French Stepstool]

1 hour ago, Samurai Bucky said:

 

Rohde has his one head-shaker of a pass that he does every game.  I'll make sure that is on my bingo card for every game.  He did work hard on the defensive side, though.  Stirtz was going to get his points, and Bucky did a good job preventing others from being too production.

 

It's getting kinda funny, in a way. Rohde does much more good than bad but you're right, it's like he has a list to check off every game:

Play hard & impact a game defensively---check.

Score 4 to 6 points---check.

Stay within yourself & make mostly smart decisions on offense, but be sure to make one pass every game that you'd chastise a seventh grader for----check.

🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️.

[Jim French Stepstool]

1 hour ago, Samurai Bucky said:

  JB did not have his typical game which is ok. 

Blackwell can impact a game & how a team defends UW just by being out there, even if he isn't 100%. Having said that, I wonder if he's somewhat under the weather but still well enough to play. There were a couple times in the 2nd half where his man got to the rack & he offered little resistance. There's illness going around throughout many rosters. Just a thought.

[Samurai Bucky]

27 minutes ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

Having said that, I wonder if he's somewhat under the weather but still well enough to play. There were a couple times in the 2nd half where his man got to the rack & he offered little resistance. There's illness going around throughout many rosters. Just a thought.

I was thinking the same thing.  Towards the end, it looked like he was much more tired than normal.  I wasn't aware of the sickness going around.  Better to get it out of the way now.  🖕

[Jim French Stepstool]

For the nite owls out there..........

Oregon is performing much better since Nate Bittle returned from his health issues. A key should be if UW can hit the boards and get the transition game going. Statistically this is a top-heavy Duck team with The 7-foot Bittle & 6'10" Kwame Evans doing most of the damage on the boards as well as scoring. On paper UW has a real advantage in the backcourt. 

It would be nice if John Blackwell is effective early. seems like it's been a while since that's happened.

[Jim French Stepstool]

I'll forego the lame "I stayed up for THIS?" joke because I'm a night owl anyway.

I guess you'd call what Oregon was doing on defense a matchup zone. But I don't think I've ever seen one where a team collapses so aggressively---and effectively---when the ball is driven. UW had next to nothing near the rim that wasn't really well-contested. At the same time, they would double-team out on the perimeter early in the clock & we never really adjusted or got comfortable. Putting someone in the high post, like a traditional zone-defense attack, might've worked but it's hard to do something that clogs up the driving lanes. The key would've been hitting threes & forcing them out of what they were doing. And while 14-45 isn't a great percentage it also isn't horrible. But 45 shots from three is a ton; that's 31 misses. Too many. Credit them for making us uncomfortable, I guess, because none of the UW perimeter guys played well. Blackwell scored points & everyone played hard enough, but everyone was poor AFA poise & decision making is concerned.

UW mostly guarded pretty well, which sounds weird since they gave up 85. But 33 of those were in the last 9:11, due to some runouts after we sold out attacking the off. boards, FTs when we started to get desperate & fouled, and frankly some late-clock threes you'd normally be happy to see them take.

I guess my bottom line would be that no one made us so uncomfortable for 40 minutes w/their defense since the TCU game, and we responded poorly. Early in the 2nd half UW was up 47-42, had two chances to extend, but turned it over and gave up a runout for an and-one. Still up by 2, but at that point I really felt UW was losing this game, and I seldom feel that way that early in a contest. The drought after going up 21-12 kinda set the tone, too.

Bieliauskas only turned it over once in 23 minutes, with 9 boards & three assists. Competing w/Bittle & Evans; that's pretty good for a freshman. But that's about the only positive I got.

[adambr2]

Firmly back on the 8/9 line.

[Jim French Stepstool]

4 hours ago, adambr2 said:

Firmly back on the 8/9 line.

Maybe; I'm not sure. I think it comes down to who else makes the tourney & what those resumes look like. You're still talking about wins at Illinois & at Michigan & the win vs MSU. This is a bad loss. The next worst one I guess is SC.

I suppose if the season ended today I'd guess they're either a 7 or an 8, but I really don't look at that stuff until the resume is complete. People will definitely have them under the microscope to see how they respond in Seattle.