No matter how good of a season a team might have, a heartbreaking loss to end the season can stick in the minds of players, coaches and fans alike throughout the entire offseason.
That will certainly be the case for Wisconsin this year following its disappointing defeat at the hands of Notre Dame in the Sweet Sixteen. For fans and players, the final 30 seconds of the game, which saw the Badgers surrender a three-point lead in seemingly the blink of an eye, will be agonized over in the coming months. Nigel Hayes’ turnover and the subsequent layup by the Fighting Irish to give them the lead for good will be a tough pill to swallow.
However, as heartbreaking a loss as that was, the passage of time will allow them to look back on the 2015-’16 season for what it really was — an almost miraculous turnaround that saw the Badgers go from NIT-bound to a fifth Sweet Sixteen appearance in the last six years.
At this point, the story of Wisconsin’s incredible turnaround has been repeated ad nauseam over the last month or so, but what this team managed to accomplish is truly remarkable.
The Badgers were always destined to take a significant step back this season. Losing Frank Kaminsky, Sam Dekker, Josh Gasser and Duje Dukan was going to be extremely tough to overcome, even though Nigel Hayes and Bronson Koenig were returning. Wisconsin wasn’t short on talent, but this roster was younger and more inexperienced than any other during the Bo Ryan era.
Expectations were tempered due to all this turnover, but even pessimistic fans probably weren’t expecting what was about to happen.
The Badgers opened the season with an absolutely stunning home loss to Western Illinois, a harbinger of things to come. They got off to a 7-5 start, which included additional home losses to in-state rivals Milwaukee and Marquette. And just when it seemed like there couldn’t be any more turmoil, head coach Bo Ryan decided to step down in mid-December to give his longtime assistant Greg Gard a shot at earning the permanent job.
While Ryan’s reasoning for doing this was understandable from his perspective, the situation Gard was thrown into was far from easy. After all the adversity and disappointment to start the year, the loss of their head coach could have completely demoralized the locker room.
Gard make some significant changes once he took over as interim coach, with the most notable obviously being the switch back to the swing offense and an increased reliance on his bench for production. Despite a rocky start to his tenure — the Badgers were 2-4 overall and 1-4 in Big Ten play in their first six games under Gard — Wisconsin finally began to click in mid-January.
On Jan. 17, the Badgers finally began to right the ship by beating No. 4 Michigan State at the Kohl Center thanks to a go-ahead basket by Ethan Happ with under 10 seconds to go. That win was the start of a stretch that saw Wisconsin win 11 of 12, including victories over No. 2 Maryland and No. 8 Iowa on the road.
In just a month and a half, the Badgers had gone from a team that looked destined for the NIT to one that secured an 18th consecutive NCAA Tournament bid and a 15th straight finish in the top four of the Big Ten standings. But above all else, Greg Gard went from an unproven interim coach to a man athletic director Barry Alvarez was confident enough in to hand him the reigns of the program on a full-time basis.
The best news of all for Wisconsin fans is that the immediate future is looking extremely bright.
With Jordan Smith as the only senior on the UW roster, the Badgers are in line to bring back 99.9 percent of their production in terms of minutes, 99.8 percent of their scoring and rebounding and 100 percent of their assists and steals.
Of course, the one great variable is Nigel Hayes, who could forgo his senior season to test the NBA waters. But even if Hayes leaves, Wisconsin will still be in pretty decent shape. If Hayes departs, the Badgers will return 81.9 percent of their minutes, 76.6 percent of their points, 83.2 percent of their rebounds, 74 percent of their assists and 81 percent of their steals. Throw in the fact that Andy van Vliet will be eligible to play, and you have a team that stands to only improve from this season.
Koenig and (possibly) Hayes will be back to provide senior leadership; Happ has the potential to be one the best players in the entire Big Ten; Vitto Brown will have a chance to build on the great progress he made this past season; Zak Showalter can continue his quest to fill Josh Gasser’s role as the ultimate glue guy; and the rest of the UW supporting cast will have another year of experience under their belts.
The Notre Dame loss stings now and will for awhile for players and fans, but it shouldn’t diminish what this resilient group of Badgers accomplished this season or what they have the potential to do moving forward.
