After falling in the championship round of the Old Spice Classic this past weekend, the Badger basketball squad returns to the Kohl Center Wednesday night as they look to redeem themselves in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.
Wisconsin is riding a five-game win streak against ACC opponents as NC State visits the Kohl Center for a duel with the battle-tested Badgers. This will be the second straight season UW has drawn a home game for the challenge after defeating eventual national champion Duke last season, which helped the Big Ten secure its first ever victory in the event.
Wisconsin is 5-6 in the challenge and 3-1 at the Kohl Center, having participated in each of the 11 seasons the event has been run. Although the victories come on an individual basis for each team, players and coaches see the challenge as beneficial to the conference as a whole in the long-run.
""We are focusing on one game at a time but you want to build a good resumé and if the Big Ten does [win] then it ultimately just helps every team in the conference,"" senior forward Jon Leuer said. ""We take pride in being a Big Ten team and I think all the other Big Ten teams take pride in the challenge.""
After competing in Orlando, Fla., UW returns home having learned a lot about themselves. One of the issues many players and coaches brought up was shot selection and shooting overall, as the Badgers shot only 35 percent from the field in the championship game against Notre Dame.
""We definitely did not shoot the ball well,"" UW assistant coach Gary Close said. ""I think we are a better shooting team than we showed but that remains to be seen.""
The Badgers' below-average shooting performance was more than obvious this weekend as they only shot 10 percent from three-point range in the first half against the Fighting Irish.
As in many of its games so far this year, Wisconsin was able to find a rhythm in the second half and went on a scoring run led by a barrage of threes. Despite the Baders' ability to find their stroke later in games, the team sees consistency as a big issue at this point in the season.
""We have stretches where we're really good and then obviously we had some stretches where we would miss some shots and had some turnovers. It's just about putting a full 40 minutes together for us,"" Leuer said. ""I think once we do that this team has a lot of potential but there were times when we were inconsistent and in the end that came back to hurt us.""
Although the team has had its bumps and bruises, the Badgers are confident in their personnel and see persistence as the key to overcoming their early season woes.
""We know we have guys on our team that can make plays and right now down the stretch we're just not doing it,"" junior guard Jordan Taylor said. ""You've just got to keep trying and not lose confidence from that and just keep working at it and it'll start falling our way.""
