Last spring when Michala Johnson decided to forgo playing for the New York Liberty of the WNBA, Wisconsin head coach Bobbie Kelsey was ecstatic, and for good reason. The team was getting back a player who only two years earlier led the Badgers in both points and rebounds per game. And while Johnson was coming off her second ACL tear in the past five years, it wasn’t that long ago she was a first-team All-Big Ten performer.
The hope for Kelsey was that once Johnson, now a sixth-year senior, regained her All-Big Ten form, the Badgers would be able to compete with the elite frontcourt competition their conference has. More specifically, Kelsey optimistically believed that Johnson’s stellar post play would command a double-team every time down the floor, and that as a result, Johnson, with her wealth of experience, would make the right decision to best help the UW offense.
That was three months ago. Wisconsin was undefeated and yet, at the same time, winless. The season had yet to begun.
The Badgers now sit at 6-14 overall, and are a dreadful 2-8 in Big Ten play. They have lost their last five games in a row, with a road game against arguably the best team in the conference, Ohio State, coming later this week. And one reason for the Wisconsin’s struggles is a result of inconsistent frontcourt play.
Back on December 15, two days after the Badgers had lost their third game in the past seven days, Johnson first publicly critiqued her own play. In UW’s first three games in December, two losses and one win, Johnson scored six points or fewer in each contest. And while she had what would turn out to be her best offensive game of the month two days earlier against Green Bay, she knew she wasn’t playing up to her potential.
“I’ve been kinda hesitant. I don’t want to make too fast of a move because then I’m running into a double or a triple. But I need to be more patient,” Johnson said.
The hesitancy she exhibited though wasn’t always a result of a double or triple teams invading her space, but instead it also was a result more of guards frequently not cutting off ball and instead watching Johnson try to muster up a good shot around the basket.
Less than two months later, the Badgers’ post-up problem still hasn’t been solved.
During their current five-game losing streak, Wisconsin’s guards still aren’t cutting as frequently as they should off ball.
“Especially when it goes in the post that’s when I yell it [move], because the person that passes it into the post, they’ve got to cut, so that their defender can’t stand still,” Kelsey said. “So if that post does want to dribble, the defender can’t just come in and swipe it because they have to worry about you moving.”
But while some of the blame can be divvied up to the guards for their failure to consistently cut when the ball gets thrown into the post, a larger portion of the blame should be dished out to both Johnson and her frontcourt companion, junior power forward Avyanna Young. Both frequently appear to be a bit hesitant and indecisive in their post moves which derails the Badgers’ offense.
One telltale sign Kelsey says of this indecision is players rushing up shots. Both Johnson and Young frequently force shots up before surveying the entire floor.
Twice in this clip Young rushes her field goal attempts. Her first shot in this possession is a long two-point jumper against Minnesota’s 3-2 zone. Young receives redshirt freshman Roichelle Marble’s pass and doesn’t even look at her teammates. Senior guard Tessa Cichy, 22, is calling for the ball on the other side of the floor, but Young doesn’t consider a pass and instead forces up a contested long jumper. But the even more problematic portion of the play comes when Young gathers Cichy’s miss for Wisconsin’s third offensive rebound of the possession. When Young gathers’ the errant shot, all five Golden Gophers are below the free throw line, meaning that Marble, as well as sharpshooting senior guards Dakota Whyte and Nicole Bauman are wide open from three. Young instead forces up a highly contested layup and the Badgers come away with no points.
Young admitted just as much after looking at the film of her 1-for-8 performance against Minnesota.
“It’s just a result of me rushing, me taking shots up after being double teamed or tripled teamed, when I could have dished it off,” Young said.
Other times Johnson and Young hesitate before dribbling, allowing the defense to collapse before they even get a good shot up.
As this play develops, Johnson first sets a poor screen on Bauman’s defender, Michigan State guard Tori Jankoska, but upon catching Bauman’s entry pass, Johnson jabs at her defender for more than 1.5 seconds. When Johnson finally makes up her mind to put the ball on the floor, she is stripped almost immediately by Jankoska, who can easily collapse on Johnson and strip the Badger center of the ball. Johnson sets up in no man's land for a post player. She receives the ball far closer to the elbow then the block and as a result she needs a dribble or two just to attempt a layup. Johnson frequently is a bit indecisive before starting her post moves, and in situations like the one above, when she then recognizes she needs a dribble or two to get to the rim, she often turns the ball over.
Against Michigan State this past Sunday, Johnson struggled finishing with only nine points in 34 minutes of play.
“I know Michala (Johnson) had some one-on-ones and got her feet tangled up a little bit, but we're trying to get the ball to our two bigs,” Kelsey said after the game. “We needed Mic to get going a little more today, and I know she feels like she could've done more, she was 4-for-10, and she usually makes her shots because in the last game she had these same shots and she knocked them down."
On multiple occasions Sunday afternoon, Johnson caught the ball on the right block before using a dribble or two to get to the left side of the hoop. She frequently forced up unbalanced left hooks which not surprisingly led to misses.
Johnson is averaging almost 11 points per game while Young is averaging a hair under eight. And while those totals aren’t terrible, both bigs have struggled consistently putting up those numbers.
According to wbbstate.com Johnson’s usage rate, a statistic estimating the number of team plays (i.e free throws, turnovers, and shots,) a player has while on the floor, is 22.4 percent, which is the third-highest percentage on the team, trailing only Bauman and Whyte. Yet of the three aforementioned players, Johnson has been the most inconsistent. Johnson, for instance, had 21 points against Nebraska last Wednesday night in Wisconsin’s 75-62 loss to the Cornhuskers, but it was her first game with more than 15 points since mid-December.
But more than just shot making, Young and Johnson have struggled consistently doing a lot of the little things that are needed to defeat elite Big Ten competition.
Height isn’t necessarily a problem for the duo as except for Iowa, a team with 11 players over six feet tall, none of the Badgers’ last five losses have come against team’s with unusually large big men.
Instead, the fact that Young and Johnson are both leaner than their opponents has more been problematic.
The difference in build is particularly evident when Young and Johnson step away from the basket to set screens.
“If you run into a bigger one it’s always gonna’ stop you more than a slim one, so we definitely need to set screens better,” Kelsey said.
And while Johnson and Young are substantially leaner than most of the opposing frontcourt players they have faced during their losing streak, they aren’t necessarily quicker.
“It depends on how the kid moves. Brionna Jones [of Maryland] can move really well. [Jasmine] Hines [of Michigan State] is a good little runner, she’s not awkward. We look for the big ones that can move. Sometime it can hurt you or it can help you,” Kelsey added.
The fact that both Brionna Jones and Jasmine Hines are still able to move with grace even with a heavier build is something Kelsey admitted the Badgers’ will look to replicate in future recruiting endeavors, but for now, Young and Johnson will have to do.
One place, though, where quickness is minimized in the mind of Kelsey is on the offensive glass, a place where effort trumps all.
Wisconsin ranks 10th in conference-only games in offensive rebounding, and is dead last in total rebounding. While Young, as evidenced by her eight offensive rebound performance against Minnesota, is seemingly always active on the offensive glass, Johnson seldom grabs more than two offensive rebounds in a game.
During the UW’s five-game losing streak, Johnson has pulled in only six offensive rebounds combined. And it’s not a fluke that in Wisconsin wins Johnson pulls in almost three more rebounds than she does in losses.
Kelsey has tried to motivate her frontcourt players by giving them game-to-game goals to try an accomplish such as getting two “O-boards” per game, but it hasn’t seemed to make much of a difference.
“It’s just an O-board. Track a ball down and you get one,” she said. “And then you say, let’s get two of them. You get one in the first half and one in the second half. At some point you’ve played long enough to get them.”
Michigan State’s Jasmine Hines pulled in nine rebounds in the Spartans’ win over Wisconsin. Maryland’s Brionna Jones had nine boards as well in only 23 minutes. Illinois’ Chatrice White had 11 when the Fighting Illini knocked off the Badgers in Champaign. And even Minnesota reserve forward Joanna Hedstrom had 12 in 25 minutes when the Golden Gophers won the team’s most recent border battle in late January.
Big Ten teams like the one’s the Badgers’ have lost to of late, have given them a ton of problems down low. After the Terrapins defeated the Badgers 90-65, Young admitted that Jones was probably the best frontcourt player she’d ever faced.
But as a whole on a per possession basis, the Badgers defense is one of the worst in the country. According to wbbstate.com they give up 0.99 points per possession, which is tied for 325 in the NCAA and is by far the worst of any Power Five conference team. And while their poor points-per-possession stats can be explained at least partially by their tough schedule, it is still a testament to their struggles defensively. They aren’t necessarily as bad as their points-per-possession stats dictate, but they are definitely worse than their conference foes.
Opposing teams have been able to attack both Young and Johnson in the post, but both Badger frontcourt players have struggled against some smaller teams as well.
Back in non-conference play, Green Bay in particular was able to exploit both Johnson and Young. Either they attempted to drag Johnson and Young away from the basket and make them follow smaller opposing players as they weaved through a variety of screens or they ran multiple high screen or curl actions knowing that Johnson in particular was uncomfortable defending the 3-point line.
Watch how in this clip, Johnson plants herself in the paint even though her man, Sam Terry, 55, spends the entirety of the possession camped beyond the arc. When Green Bay point guard Jen Wellnitz, 1, attacks the rim drawing both Johnson and Wellnitz’s man, Roichelle Marble towards the basket, Johnson has no chance of recovering in time and barely even gets a hand up to contest Terry’s shot.
Plays like this occur frequently which is why recently Kelsey has started playing smaller, quicker lineups more frequently.
After a small lineup consisting of Whyte, Bauman and Cichy as well as Marble and Young was successful in the fourth quarter of the Badgers’ loss to Minnesota, Kelsey believed that starting small against Nebraska might be a way to stop the bleeding for her team.
She was mistaken, as the Badgers started slowly and trailed by 16 after the first quarter en route to their 75-62 loss in Lincoln. Johnson came off the bench and surprisingly had her best game of the season, finishing with 21 points on 10-of-15 shooting.
Johnson terrorized eight-time Big Ten Freshman of the Week Jessica Shepard down low, showing the young center just how good she can be.
But it was just another agonizing reminder of UW frontcourt players’ consistency issues.
In their loss to Michigan State on Sunday, Johnson, as described above, struggled. So did Young and the Badgers again fell flat in the frontcourt.
As a result, Bauman and Whyte have been forced to carry most of the offensive load as of late. Cichy has done her best to try and shut down opposing wing players since returning from an illness that kept her out the first four Big Ten games of the season.
That leaves Young and Johnson without a clear and consistent role for the Badgers. If their respective inconsistent play endures, then so too will the Wisconsin’s losing streak. But if they turn it around, then the Badgers’ win-loss record will likely follow.
