The Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team has undergone a frustrating, painstaking pattern the last two seasons. Start the season strong with marquee non-conference wins, show strength early in conference play and then endure a brutal losing streak that derails their season.
Last year, they started the season 11-2, featuring a win on the road against Marquette, a victory against a ranked Maryland team and a narrow one-point loss to defending national champions Kansas. Then, after opening true Big Ten play with a victory over Minnesota, the Badgers lost six of their next seven games. They never truly recovered, finishing with a paltry 17-13 record and ending any hopes of an NCAA Tournament appearance with an embarrassing loss in the Big Ten Tournament to Ohio State.
This year, there was hope that the 2022-23 season was an aberration and that the Badgers would shed last year’s mediocrity.
The Badgers earned two strong wins in Fort Myers over quality programs Virginia and SMU. Then, they once again defeated No. 3 Marquette. When January ended, Wisconsin had swept blue-blood Michigan State, taken down solid teams in Northwestern and Nebraska, and had a 16-4 record good for a No. 6 national ranking. The Badgers seemed like they would return to the NCAA Tournament as a potential Big Ten champion and a top-four national seed.
Then, the spiral happened. First, there were two losses, one to Nebraska and another to national title contender Purdue. But then, a pair of losses to basement dwellers Michigan and Rutgers, paired with defeats to mediocre Iowa and Indiana, meant the Badgers went 2-6 in the month of February. Any dream of winning a regular season Big Ten title went flying out of the window.
A famous proverb comes to mind: “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Head coach Greg Gard must answer glaring questions about the state of his program. According to ESPN’s latest Bubble Watch, Wisconsin is still a lock to make the tournament. But is that enough? For a program that made two Final Fours just a decade ago, qualifying for a tournament that holds 68 teams is not enough.
When you consider Gard’s overall profile, there are things to like. He owns a .636 winning percentage in Madison and led the team to a Big Ten title in 2020 and 2022. However, they haven’t made it out of the NCAA Tournament’s first weekend since 2017.
Badgers fans wouldn’t be mistaken if they feel like they’ve seen something like this before. Paul Chryst, the reliable seven-season football head coach, appears as Gard’s mirror image. Chryst led the Badgers to a lot of intermittent success, with victories in the Cotton and Orange Bowls in 2016 and 2017 as well as a 2020 appearance in the Rose Bowl.
However, Chryst was unable to get his team into the College Football Playoff and showed signs of regression late in his tenure. The 2020 season, albeit severely disrupted by Covid, ended with a 4-3 record and a victory in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. They finished a solid 9-4 in 2021 but failed to win the weak Big Ten West.
It all came crashing down in 2022. Wisconsin started 2-3, with a home loss to Washington State and blowout losses to Ohio State and Illinois. Despite a roundly successful tenure, athletic director Chris McIntosh made the bold move to relieve Chryst in October 2022. What followed was Luke Fickell’s hiring, which is still under evaluation but received almost unanimous approval at the time.
McIntosh, it should be noted, also changed men’s hockey coaches. His pick, Mike Hastings, completely revived the men’s hockey program in one season. McIntosh has shown he is willing to move on from long-time members of the Badgers family when things aren’t working.
While this chapter in the Wisconsin basketball book is not over yet, it might not be hard to write the ending. The Badgers have only won three games since the end of January. If they sputter out of the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments, McIntosh will have to once again consider making a big move.
If Gard’s job security is a topic of fierce debate almost every year in Badgerland, then maybe that answers the question right there.
