This Badgers team is just not very good. with one game left in season against a ranked team they are 1-7 on the year vs ranked teams with their quality win of the year coming against Loyola. With playing a top 5 Iowa team to finish the season they will likely finish 1-8 vs ranked teams and a 10-10 big Ten record and a 16-11 record overall. This team has been below average this year. Their last win vs a winning team was when back on Jan. 27th they beat a 9-7 Maryland team. This is a team that pretty much only can beat the bad teams teams it faces. If the Badgers lose in the 1st or 2nd round of the Big Ten tourney I think they should be left out of the NCAA tourney and sent to the NIT. Though even if they make the NCAA tourney they will probably be a 9 or 10 seed and out in the 1st round.
#1 they are not going to the NIT.....lets get that out of the way. They have a NET ranking of 25
Now lets chat about why this team has not played well and not just look at box scores for answers
-This team both individually and as a group has not shot the ball well from 3. Potter and Ford have fallen off from 3 and Reuvers has fallen off the cliff. Davison is shooting about 25% from 2...that pretty much sums up the shooting but its more than missed shots
-Purdue outscored UW 36-20 in the paint. Thats not going to win many games. And some of the "luck" is not going their way. Wheeler is shooting 22% from 3 and hits 3-3 last night and the defense was not bad
-Shot selection as been well, inconsistent. In the ILL game Davison launched 2 long 2's with 20 seconds plus on the shot clock. For a senior thats unacceptably bad selection.
-Reuvers is getting manhandled down low. The next time Potter plays ball screen defense will be the first.
-The lack of an interior game on offense has impacted how this team shoots from 3. Its not strong at the rim (Potter / Reuvers) and Wahl is just not strong enough yet to finish.
Bottom line this is not a bad team. Its a good team that IF they can get shots to drop from 3 could make a mini run, or at least get back to historical shooting numbers Depth is an issue and that does not help. Guess is 6-7 seed any this point the conference is that good, it will have 4 teams getting 1 or 2 seeds.