Bucky in the NIT - Yea, they deserve it

Keg Man

Keg Man

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As you know, I'm the knuckle dragging old school rugger. And, if you haven't gathered, I've been too short for basketball since junior high - maybe before.

But, this Badgers team is infuriating. They don't shoot very well and apparently the free throw line and layups are NO NOs except during warm ups.

BUT, and this is a big BUT - watch them. They stick together, they don't quit, they hustle, they try. Sometimes the results of their efforts are comical and literally amazing as to how they can't get it done, but their effort is always there.

They can beat and get beaten by anybody. It all comes down to a couple random bounces at the end. They have to be giving Vegas fits.

In the NIT, they are playing hard. Probably, because they just enjoy playing basketball together. I'm enjoying this run. They have a chance to play for a National Championship. I'm with them. To me it seems like they have went back to a more 'team' based offense - including Chucky, than the end of the season and new guys are getting more involved which is good. If just if (a very big word), they could start hitting 3s again, make 60% of their layups, and keep shooting free throws at or above their amazing for Bucky high NIT clip, they'll run away with this thing.

Regarding Gard, is he a great coach - good coach, I don't know. BUT, these guys play hard for him. That's something. And, it's why his situation is different than Chryst's.
 
Talk about laying an egg. 13 pt 2d half. 2 missed clutch free throws. No points in last 9 minutes. Afraid to shoot in last 5 seconds.

I take back everything good I said about them. I don't care if they all transfer.

And, Gard has to go
 
Gard is a crappy coach. Was handed the job by Bo Ryan retiring early in the season. He got to sweet 16 his first 2 years as coach but since then has never made it past the 2nd round. Shows he's not a very good recuriter.
 
Yesterday's game was a microcosm of the season. Great first half, bad second half. They were shooting out of their minds in the first half. That didn't happen in the second half. It was all exposed in that last half. Nobody on this team can create their own offense. Hepburn is a close as you come but it's hard to make a living on step-back jumpers. Nobody can take it to the rim off the dribble and force teams to foul.

Crowl and Wahl mess up an end of game situation. Essegian tosses up a horrible looking air ball during the 2nd half drought. Klesmit suddenly disappears after several solid games. The bench once again does nothing. Everything went wrong in the second half and there wasn't that one player, like Johnny Davis last year, to pull them out of the drought.

Gard is a mixed bag. He's a very good coach but not a great recruiter/evaluator of talent and isn't able to construct a roster. He recruits the same guy every time at every position. Fairly skilled, high floor, low ceiling guys with at best average athletic ability is all he ever looks at. That needs to change or he won't be the coach much longer.
 
13 points in the second half. And my God free throws again. 2 horrible clutch clanks.

No points in the last 9 minutes. (I accept that it happens, but it happens to Bucky every game - every game.) Defense can only take you so far in basketball.

A good coach would have tried something. More timeouts. Taking your starters out for an extended break to coach them back up. Something.


Gard did nothing.

And, about recruiting. The current Badgers crop does not cut it against talented teams. We were near the bottom of the B1G this year. We barely beat OR without its 3 scorers.

I know longer think we are well coached, and we just aren't talented.
 
Was a mistake to extend Gard after last season. Unless they find someone to pay the $12 million fee to fire him he's going to hang around a couple more years and likely recruit more kids that don't have much choice outside of UW to play D1 ball.
 
Keg Man said:
13 points in the second half. And my God free throws again. 2 horrible clutch clanks.

No points in the last 9 minutes. (I accept that it happens, but it happens to Bucky every game - every game.) Defense can only take you so far in basketball.

A good coach would have tried something. More timeouts. Taking your starters out for an extended break to coach them back up. Something.


Gard did nothing.

And, about recruiting. The current Badgers crop does not cut it against talented teams. We were near the bottom of the B1G this year. We barely beat OR without its 3 scorers.

I know longer think we are well coached, and we just aren't talented.
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I get what you are saying and understand the frustration after another ugly showing but Gard is cut from the Bo Ryan cloth. Bo was loath to call time-outs in games to change things. He didn't particularly care for that approach because he felt the players had been coached on what to do and just needed to execute. Gard just seems to work the same way, good or bad. If Bo didn't like something you did, he'd just yank you instead of calling a time-out.

As for Gard being able to coach, nobody was calling his coaching a problem when he was winning Big-10 championships and getting to sweet 16's. In fact, when Bo retired, the team was 6-5 and had just lost games to Western Illinois, UW-Milwaukee, and a very mediocre Marquette team, all three at the Kohl Center. Gard took over, made some changes on offense, steadied the ship and went on to the NCAA tourney after beating a number of ranked Big-10 teams during the season. They got to the Sweet-16 after beating #2 seeded Xavier.

He did that with Bo's recruits. More recently he did it with a lucky turn of events when Johnny Davis blew up last year and Gard made some adjustments to the offense allowing him to shine. I think Gard can still coach, but he just doesn't have much to work with and that is on him and is a huge problem and if it isn't fixed it will cost him his job, maybe as soon as next year.
 
57packer said:
I get what you are saying and understand the frustration after another ugly showing but Gard is cut from the Bo Ryan cloth. Bo was loath to call time-outs in games to change things. He didn't particularly care for that approach because he felt the players had been coached on what to do and just needed to execute. Gard just seems to work the same way, good or bad. If Bo didn't like something you did, he'd just yank you instead of calling a time-out.

As for Gard being able to coach, nobody was calling his coaching a problem when he was winning Big-10 championships and getting to sweet 16's. In fact, when Bo retired, the team was 6-5 and had just lost games to Western Illinois, UW-Milwaukee, and a very mediocre Marquette team, all three at the Kohl Center. Gard took over, made some changes on offense, steadied the ship and went on to the NCAA tourney after beating a number of ranked Big-10 teams during the season. They got to the Sweet-16 after beating #2 seeded Xavier.

He did that with Bo's recruits. More recently he did it with a lucky turn of events when Johnny Davis blew up last year and Gard made some adjustments to the offense allowing him to shine. I think Gard can still coach, but he just doesn't have much to work with and that is on him and is a huge problem and if it isn't fixed it will cost him his job, maybe as soon as next year.
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To me I don't care if you win a B1G title. He needs to do something in the Tourney which he's done nothing. First two years of sweet 16 were with Bo's guys. He has been able to do nothing in the tourney with his own.
 
Gard's last time out with 5.8 seconds on the clock was horrible. There was an open road to the bucket, and he squandered it by calling the darned thing. Of course that wasn't any worse than his pathetic decision on combinations he put on the floor over the last 9 minutes, and his decisions on how to attack the bucket.

Those designed lone wolf attacks at the bucket, and close in passing within the 6 foot ring are game killers. The passes rarely connect, and our drivers had no idea who they should pass to on outlet passes, mainly because they were poorly spaced.

I put this loss totally on Gard. Hopefully next year is his last year in Madison.
 
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