Having finished off the regular season in style with three straight conference victories, Wisconsin men’s basketball now heads down to Indianapolis to begin what it hopes is an extended postseason run. Just a year after being upset in the Big Ten quarterfinals by Penn State, the Badgers (12-6 Big Ten, 23-8 overall) will likely enter Friday’s quarterfinal matchup with Indiana (11-7, 25-7) as a slight underdog.
Although Wisconsin was able to defeat the Hoosiers at the Kohl Center back on Jan. 26, IU will no doubt have an advantage with the game being played at Indianapolis’ Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Just 2-6 outside the state of Indiana, the Hoosiers are 23-1 in their home state, with three of those victories coming against top-five opponents.
“The crowds [in Bloomington] have been so fantastic and I have no doubt that it is going to carry over there,” Indiana head coach Tom Crean said Monday. “I know our guys thrive on it.”
Beyond the Hoosier home court advantage, the Badgers will have to overcome the demons that inevitably accompany a team that hasn’t won in Indy since the 2008 championship game, a run of three consecutive losses in the conference’s postseason tournament.
While UW will be trying to exact revenge for its recent struggles at the renamed Bankers Life Fieldhouse, the Hoosiers will no doubt be out to prove that they let one get away back in Madison.
One of the reasons that the Hoosiers felt that way was the sub-standard play of freshman forward Cody Zeller. The Big Ten’s freshman of the year, Zeller finished the regular season averaging 15.4 points and 6.4 rebounds per game. But against the Badgers, Zeller managed just seven points and three rebounds while struggling through foul trouble for most of the game.
“He got a foul called on him the second possession of the game,” Crean said after that game. “There were a couple times we tried to get the ball to him but they three-quartered him, and we didn’t give him the chance to post up like he is used to.”
Outside of a bad night in Madison, Zeller has been one of the best players in the Big Ten. The Washington, Ind. native has been a major factor in Indiana’s 13-game improvement over last season and would figure to play a pivotal role should the Hoosiers make a run through the postseason.
“You could tell from his bloodlines how good he could be,” UW head coach Bo Ryan said of Zeller. “Sometimes potential is a curse but not in his case, not with what he has been around.”
While it seems likely that Zeller’s numbers will begin to regress toward their mean, junior forward Jared Berggren has been a kryptonite of sorts for the Zeller family this season. Before holding the younger Cody to his second-worst scoring of the year, Berggren held older brother Tyler to just 12 points in Wisconsin’s 60-57 loss at North Carolina back on Nov. 30. The elder Zeller was just 3-for-5 from the field, his lowest single-game shot total of the season.
Unlike some teams headed to Indianapolis, the Badgers have the NCAA Tournament to look forward to next week. But with a conference championship on the line, there is no doubt that their focus will be on the task at hand.
“We are who we are and now we go on to ‘next’,” Ryan said. “And next is the Big Ten Tournament.”
