KenPom says Wisconsin leads the B1G in “luck.” By a lot.
In fact, the next luckiest B1G team is Michigan State, which checks in at #86. Stanford and Washington are the only other P5 teams in the Top 20. (Illinois is 125, which seems incredibly high given the injuries, illness & Kofi’s $uspenSion.)
Well, the Badgers returned to the mean.
Greg Gard turned to his SID Patrick Herb (their Derrick Burson) to query the Brad Davison 50%-from-three streak. It was 10 games. Davison is a career 36.6% shooter from deep. Pretty good, not great. Kinda normal.
Against Trent, he was 0-for-6.
After a season that saw our All-American sit for a quarter of the games, while our other All-American was just plain out for two months, it’s nice that the other team had bad luck.
Brad Underwood wants you to believe that his team had something to do with the Badgers 3-of-24 performance. That could be true. For example, if Badger shooters were plum tuckered from dodging defenders when they launched those wide-open threes …
Illinois didn’t shoot well from the arc, too. As a team, the Illini were 7-for-22.
But oh boy were they good from a foot away. Wisconsin’s non-fouling policy didn’t work in either sense. The Badgers were called for 10 fouls while guarding Kofi, and they also played Kofi so softly that he was frequently able to convert shots from within double-teams.
Lose-lose.
Andre Curbelo returned from COVID protocol and played eleven minutes (11:29), scoring seven points, dishing two assists and committing two turnovers.
All-Big Ten candidate Johnny Davis led the Badgers with 22 points and 14 rebounds, but he needed 19 shots to get those 22 points. He converted 5-of-19 from the floor, 1-of-5 from three-point range and 11-of-14 from the free-throw line.
Tyler Wahl was Wisconsin’s other double-digit scorer. He scored 12 points in the first half, but only two in the second. Underwood said Illini halftime adjustments made it harder for Wahl to receive the ball in a good position to score.
You probably won’t see Greg Gard make this mistake in the B1G Tournament. Sorry to be a downer.
But hey, FIRST PLACE.