After seeing its 23-game home winning streak brought to an end Saturday with a 61-54 defeat at the hands of No. 11 Marquette, No. 14 Wisconsin (6-2 overall) will quickly have the opportunity to begin a new streak when UW-Green Bay visits the Kohl Center Wednesday night.
The Phoenix (2-0 Horizon League, 4-4 overall) have never won in the 14 games played against the Badgers in Madison and are 0-4 on the road thus far this season. However, head coach Brian Wardle's team is riding high after winning back-to-back games this past weekend to start Horizon League play. With many of the Phoenix players having grown up in the shadow of Wisconsin basketball, the annual matchup with the Badgers is something that Green Bay has always circled on the calendar.
"Having been on both ends of it, it's pretty exciting," head coach Bo Ryan said of the intra-state rivalry. "Having coached at UW-Milwaukee, I knew what it was like getting ready for this. You know what the players are thinking. It's just natural."
While this is certainly one of the bigger games of the year for UW-Green Bay, it remains an important test for Wisconsin as well. The Badgers head into Wednesday night having lost their past two games and clearly in need of a quick turnaround. With another ranked opponent in UNLV scheduled to come to Madison this weekend, Wisconsin must shake off the cobwebs and do more than just squeak away with a victory.
"Obviously first of all, we want to get the win any way possible," sophomore guard Josh Gasser said Monday. "But at the same time we just want to get into the flow of our offense together. I guess we need to get our mojo, our swagger back that we had at the beginning of the year when we were just so confident and in a flow."
At least on paper, it seems that goal number one for the Badgers has to be to shoot at a higher percentage. After shooting nearly 50 percent from the field in the first six games, Wisconsin has struggled greatly in two losses over the past week, shooting just 36 percent from the field against North Carolina and 32 percent in the loss to Marquette.
But for Wisconsin to really turn the offense around, there is plenty it can do in order to get the shots falling once again.
"We just need to do a better job of moving the ball as a team," senior guard Jordan Taylor said. "We've gotten stagnant at times, a lot of the time. So its just a matter of getting back to our stuff and keeping the ball moving."
One thing that Wisconsin must improve upon is the spreading out the scoring. After having six different players post games with double-digit point totals over the six-game winning streak at the start of the year, only three players have hit the mark since. Against Marquette, only Taylor managed to cross the 10-point threshold, finishing with 13 points on 4-of -10 shooting.
But first and foremost, the Badgers have to take care of the ball. During its three-point loss in Chapel Hill, Wisconsin only turned the ball over four times, the lowest any team has been forced into against North Carolina since Duke only had three in a neutral site game back in 2002. But while that performance left many people impressed with the Badgers, even in defeat, a 12-turnover game at home against the Golden Eagles gave plenty of cause for concern.
"On Saturday we kind of laid an egg," junior forward Jared Berggren said. "I felt like we didn't put our best foot forward and for whatever reason Marquette just got the best of us."
Just five games remain before Wisconsin opens up Big Ten play at Nebraska Dec. 27, and having suffered tough losses in their two biggest non-conference matchups, the Badgers know that they need to right the ship and head into conference play on a good note.
"Anytime you lose, it's critical to come back and win the next time," Taylor said. "Its just a matter of getting back on track. Making shots, playing basketball."
