For the past three years, he's been a player teams have looked past, but on Saturday against Pepperdine, junior forward Jason Chappell made them take notice.
In the first 10 minutes of the game, Chappell scored eight of his 12 first-half points, including two three-pointers.
Pepperdine head coach Mike Westphal said Chappell was a weapon Pepperdine failed to take into account in planning its defense against Wisconsin.
'This team certainly has a lot of balance,' Westphal said. 'We didn't know that Chappell could shoot the ball as well as he did. Our strategy was to try to have our center clog the middle and keep Taylor and Tucker from hurting us inside, and if we gave up anything, we gave up shots to him, and he started dropping them on our heads all over the place.'
In the second half, Pepperdine adjusted to address Chappell's outside shot and consequently held him to three points in the last 20 minutes of play (3-for-3 free throws). Chappell finished the day with 15 points, a career high.
'They don't really expect [centers] to shoot,' Chappell said of his success from behind the arc. 'I haven't really shot that much outside so far this season. So I'd imagine that they'll post up on me a little tighter.'
But Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan, while pleased with Chappell's success, was not as surprised as Pepperdine was.
'If they're not going to come out and play him, he can knock those shots down,' Ryan said. 'So that stretched the defense and he took advantage of what the defense was giving him ?? But that's what we practice and that's what you just wait to see in games.'
Pepperdine adjusted to defending Chappell, holding him to three points and two assists in the second half. That gave junior guard Alando Tucker the space he needed to make his mark in the game. Pepperdine held Tucker to two points in the first half (0-for-4 field goals, 2-5 free throws), but Tucker exploded for 14 points in the second.
'He's a good player. It's hard to hold him down for the whole game,' Westphal said.
Another key to the Badgers' win was containing the main Pepperdine threat, freshman Michael Gerrity. Gerrity was essentially shut down by Wisconsin, scoring just one point in the first half.
Wisconsin opened the second half with intense defense as well, holding Pepperdine scoreless until 14:59, when the Waves' senior guard Tashaan Forehan-Kelly hit two free throws.
Westphal noted the Badgers' tough defense.
'The first half, we shot a very poor percentage,' he said. 'And I give Wisconsin a lot of credit for that ?? They sure blocked a lot of shots early.'
Ryan praised the entire team for their efficiency against Gerrity.
'You've gotta give credit to not just the guys that were guarding him,' Ryan said, 'but I thought the bigs hedged well, some pretty decent help and recover by the bigs.'
Tucker agreed.
'I think the most important thing was our bigs stepping out.'
While the team was happy with their defense, especially the tenacity of the big men, sophomore center Brian Butch maintained that there's always room for improvement.
'I don't think,' Butch said, 'until they don't score a point that we'll be happy.'
