Wisconsin Basketball: Same Team, Different Year.
That statement seems to ring true nearly every year that UW head coach Bo Ryan’s team hits the floor. However, this season the Badgers must replace two all-Big Ten performers in the frontcourt in Jon Leuer and Keaton Nankivil, who together were responsible for over 41% of last year’s scoring.
But although Wisconsin only returns two starters from last year’s Sweet 16 team, the Badgers are not as young as many have made them out to be.
“We’re pretty experienced,” senior guard Rob Wilson said at the team’s media day on Monday. “A lot of guys played in the games somewhere down in their careers. Besides the freshman being the youngsters, we have a lot of guys who’ve gotten playing time.”
UW returns both starters in the backcourt, with Wilson and Ben Brust also coming into the year with game experience at the guard positions. Senior guard Jordan Taylor will enter the season as a candidate for national player of the year and sophomore Josh Gasser comes off of a freshman season that saw him average nearly six points and four rebounds per game over the course of 34 games, tying the UW record for games played by a freshman.
“{We have} really high expectations this year…” Taylor said. “We have a lot of experience in the backcourt and everybody’s been working hard.”
With the backcourt for the most part settled, the focus turns toward a frontcourt that will feature three new starters. Despite the turnover, the Badgers have a trio of juniors with plenty of big-time game experience in Mike Bruesewitz, Jared Berggren, and Ryan Evans. Together, the three started 14 games last season and combined for nearly 10 points and 6.5 rebounds per game, numbers that they feel will continue to trend upward as this season rolls on.
“I guess it’s the Wisconsin way, upperclassmen lead the way…” Bruesewitz said. “When its your turn to step up, you’ve got to embrace that role.”
In addition to the names Badger fans are familiar with, UW adds to its arsenal redshirt freshman Evan Anderson. The 6 foot-10 inch Stanley, Wisconsin native has already impressed his teammates in early practices and will bring a new dimension of strength to the Badger front line.
“That’s what I hope to do this year, just to be a strong guy in the middle,” Anderson said. “And not let guys like {Ohio State sophomore forward} Jared Sullinger and some of those other guys get so many easy baskets.”
Anderson and the rest of the big men are hoping to improve on an interior defense that at times was a glaring weakness on an otherwise impressive defensive effort by the Badgers over the course of last season.
Although Wisconsin was 4th among all Division 1 teams in scoring defense, giving up just 58.6 points per game, they struggled to contain big men including Butler senior Matt Howard, whose twenty point effort in the NCAA Sweet 16 doused the Badgers’ hopes of a run at the Final Four.
In addition, this new front court brings a far greater interior presence on the offensive end than the Nankivil-Leuer tandem did last season.
“Jon and Keaton are such good shooters from the perimeter that we needed to get the ball on the outside. Its a tough matchup for a lot of bigs to cover them on the perimeter” Gasser said Monday. “This year, with Jared Berggren, he’s a good post scorer. And then Evan Anderson, he’s such a brute down low. Its pretty hard to stop him one-on-one.”
While UW is now more than a week into their preseason practice schedule, game action still lies nearly two weeks away with the regular season one more week down the road. In the meantime, the Badgers continue to slowly make progress, progress they hope will put them in a position to once again contend for a Big Ten title.
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