After back-to-back Final Four appearances, the Badgers struggled mightily to start the 2015-’16 season thanks to the departures of Frank Kaminsky, Sam Dekker and Josh Gasser. The team was reeling, and was just 9-9 several games into the Big Ten season.
Then, though, something flipped. Everyone turned it on. Nigel Hayes took over. Ethan Happ found his groove. Bronson Koenig regained his composure and took smart, efficient shots.
The Badgers would win 11 of their next 13 games, cruising to yet another top 4 finish in the conference. They survived Pittsburgh and upset Xavier in the NCAA Tournament before falling by the narrowest of margins to Notre Dame in the Sweet 16.
Now UW returns every contributor from a team that looked like one of the best in the country at the end of the season and is poised to cause damage in an otherwise-freshman heavy conference.
Nigel Hayes
While conversations about social justice and civil rights have been the predominant topic linked to senior forward Nigel Hayes this fall, the Badger forward will set foot on the Kohl Center floor for one final year hoping first and foremost to help UW win a national championship.
Hayes, the Preseason Big Ten Player of the Year, said at Big Ten Media Day in early October that preseason awards don’t matter to him and that postseason awards, and more importantly, postseason results, are far more valuable.
The senior forward also tested the NBA draft waters last spring before electing to return to school.
Hayes regressed notably from three-point range last season, shooting a dreadful 29 percent from three and a mere 37 percent from the field. While he did average 16 points per game, the Badger forward had the most impact around the basket and at the line.
Hayes has potential to be one of the best players in the country, but will need to become a more consistent shooter if he hopes to do so.
Ethan Happ
Let’s not dance around the truth here—Happ threw down the single greatest freshman performance in Wisconsin basketball history last season.
For perspective, if he were to maintain his freshman year averages for four years, Happ would finish tied for fifth in career points, fifth in career field goal percentage, second in steals and would smash both the career total and offensive rebounding records.
Happ spent his redshirt season under the tutelage of Frank Kaminsky, and it shows; he’s one of the smartest, most well-rounded players ever to step foot in the Kohl Center.
Much-improved footwork and a ballooning sense of self-confidence are just the tools Happ needs to take this season over. We’re not talking about a good Big Ten player, here. This is potentially one of the top players in the entire country. It would take work and a system that would run the ball through him, but Happ could legitimately average upwards of 15 points and 10 rebounds this year.
Toward the end of the season, Happ began to show the creativity in the post that Kaminsky showed night-in and night-out, and his quick hands helped him record the fifth most steals ever in a single season for the Badgers.
After averaging just 28.1 minutes per game in his debut season, Happ is ready to show the nation what he can do in an expanded feature role. What we saw last season was the floor, and there might not even be a ceiling.
Happ is not your run-of-the-mill, above-average center. He is a bona fide superstar in the making, and he’s ready to explode.
Bronson Koenig
Bronson Koenig wants to be the best point guard on the best team in the country. Being one of the only Native Americans in college basketball and one of the only Native Americans with a shot to make it to the NBA helps to motivate the Badger point guard to reach his lofty goal.
But Koenig truly believes he can be that good, and he believes that the Badgers can be that prolific as a team.
Koenig had what he called the best offseason of his life, reworking his body with Mike Lee, a basketball strength coach in Los Angeles and Corey Calliet, a celebrity trainer at UCLA. He has returned to Madison looking to build on his underwhelming 2015 campaign.
Koenig had the highlight of the Badgers’ season last year, a buzzer-beater over Xavier in the NCAA Tournament, which advanced UW to the Sweet 16, but the senior guard struggled to consistently live up to the high expectations that pundits and Koenig himself had.
Last season, Koenig averaged just 13.1 points per game and shot only 39.2 percent from the field, saying he “got fat … out of shape and slow” due to a nagging knee injury. This year though, Koenig has returned to school healthy and wants to be the player he can possibly be.
“I want to do this year what brought me here and what got me all the scholarships that I received, because I think I kinda got away from that when I got here, and the past few years I haven’t really showed all that much,” Koenig said.
This will be Koenig’s final year in Madison, and it’s time for him to do what he knows he is capable of.
Zak Showalter
After playing just 7.2 minutes per game over his first two seasons as a Badger, Showalter was forced into a starting role thanks to the graduation of Josh Gasser. As a fiery role player coming off the bench, he was great. As an every-game starter, he proved he was capable of handling a big workload.
Showalter’s primary role is as a lockdown perimeter defender, where he’s thrived under Greg Gard. He was second on the team in steals per 40 minutes, but even that doesn’t adequately portray his defensive prowess.
Last season, Showalter led the team with an astounding 16 charges, including a memorable call in the closing seconds of an NCAA Tournament matchup with Xavier that would lead to Koenig’s buzzer-beating heave.
Over the course of his first two seasons in Madison, Showalter made a paltry 16.6 percent of his three-point attempts. Knowing he would need to contribute offensively in his redshirt junior season, however, Showalter rededicated himself to his jump shot over the summer. The result was a double in his three-point efficiency, as he made 34.6 of his 107 attempts. With a newfound deep stroke, he resembles his predecessor Gasser more than ever.
Vitto Brown
To put it bluntly, Brown looked lost on the court in his limited minutes over the first two years of his career. He was careless with the basketball, didn’t attempt a single three-point shot and could only really be counted on for defense.
Then came last season, in which Brown took 95 threes and made a team-high 40 percent of them. He made smart decisions and became one of the Badgers’ most reliable offensive forces. He can’t handle a huge scoring role, but Brown is fantastically efficient and his mid-range jump shot will again be a staple of the Badger offense.
Jordan Hill
Bronson Koenig wasn’t the only Badger point guard to work out with NBA players this offseason. Redshirt junior Jordan Hill also spent time during the offseason on the West Coast working out with the likes of NBA players Evan Turner, Khris Middleton and Justin Holiday, among others.
The junior guard worked diligently to improve his ball-handling and scoring ability, noting that he didn’t try to score as much as he could have last season.
Hill, like many of his teammates recognizes that the clock is ticking on this Badger group.
“But if you were gonna ask me,” Hill said, “I think big things are gonna happen.”
Everyone else
Khalil Iverson will yet again play the role of on-court hype man, throwing down obscene dunks over unwitting defenders. He still can’t shoot, but his head is never below the rim anyway.
His good friend and roommate Charlie Thomas will likely come in rarely and mostly for defensive purposes. He’s a strong defensive rebounder and provides some length in the lane.
Andy Van Vliet spent his season sitting on the bench after being ruled ineligible by the
Alex Illikainen rounds out the Badger role players as an offensive threat inside and out. A smooth jump and good vision will give the Badgers stability in the limited minutes that he plays.
