In case you haven’t heard, the No. 1-seeded Badgers (32-3 overall) are playing No. 8-seed Oregon in the NCAA Tournament’s Round of 32 for the second year in a row. The Badgers return almost the same team. The Ducks? Not so much.
Forward Mike Moser and guard Jason Calliste who combined for 32 points against the Badgers last March? Graduated.
Assist leader Johnathan Loyd and rotation centers Waverly Austin and Richard Amardi? Graduated.
Rotation forward Ben Carter? Transferred.
Forward Damyean Dotson and guard Dominic Artis, who were expected to be major contributors this season? Banished, for very good reason.
The only players the Badgers will see again from their thriller in Milwaukee will be senior guard Joseph Young and junior forward Elgin Cook. At the very least, they’re two very good players to keep around, particularly Young.
The Houston native recently won the 2015 Pac-12 Player of the Year award and subsequently invaded Twitter with an absurd desperation shot to send Oregon to the Pac-12 Championship and quite possibly the NCAA Tournament. He has averaged 20.4 points per game and could threaten to surpass the 29 points he scored a year ago during that loud night in Milwaukee.
“Joseph Young is one of the best scorers in the nation,” junior forward Sam Dekker said. “He's proven that the past few years, and they have other guys that are good. Elgin Cook is a Wisconsin guy, so he's always fired up to play against us. They got a lot of talent. The Pac-12 is a good conference, so you gotta be ready for a battle. I think we're going to be.”
That said, Oregon’s exodus has left them thin and, more importantly for Wisconsin, short. The Ducks do not currently feature a player taller than 6-foot-7 in their rotation, which will leave them extremely vulnerable to a possible Kaminsky-ing. That isn’t even to mention how they will guard Dekker and Nigel Hayes all at the same time.
Oregon ranks outside the Top 100 in kenpom.com’s defensive rankings and played like it Friday, winning a 79-73 shootout against the No. 9-seed Oklahoma State Cowboys. Against Wisconsin, which has a chance at finishing as the most efficient offense in kenpom.com's history, it’s hard to see the Badgers not scoring at will.
If Oregon is going to pose a challenge, it’s going to come through Herculean efforts from Young and Cook, who are, by no surprise, the Ducks’ top two scorers. Young clearly had no trouble against Gasser last time they met, but it’s a new game and Gasser is still one of the top on-ball defenders in nation.
All Young really had to say about him at Saturday’s press conference? “I guess he’s a good defender.”
Tip-off is set for 6:45 p.m. CST in Omaha, Nebraska, televised by truTV.
Zach Rastall contributed to this report.
