Greg Gard uses 'executive decision magic' in Wisconsin basketball scrimmage
A scrimmage that came down to the final shot, a charge, and some finagling by Greg Gard got the Wisconsin basketball season underway
A pair of dueling second-half 9-0 runs, and “a little head coach executive decision magic,” brought the annual Wisconsin basketball Red-White scrimmage down to the wire. A 46-44 victory for Team Red over Team White marked the unofficial beginning of the Wisconsin Badgers’ college basketball season.
“To make it a little more dramatic,” as Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard put it, two phantom lane violations on Team Red free throw attempts allowed John Blackwell a pair of possessions to tie the ball game. The junior guard delivered on the first attempt, making a contested three-point jumper over point guard Nick Boyd. Boyd responded with a pair of made high-pressure free throws to take a two-point lead, but Blackwell did not have a second magic moment in him, missing a jumper as the final buzzer sounded.
Blackwell did a bit of everything for Team White, scoring 13 points, collecting seven rebounds, and dishing four assists. After going through the NBA Draft process this summer, the preseason All-Big Ten honoree is already pushing his expectations upward.
Gard touted “the calmness [Blackwell] plays with,” in an interview after the scrimmage. “Obviously, you know, he wanted the ball in his hands there at the end. The first one went in; second one didn’t. So, I just like his moxie and the poise he plays with.”
Austin Rapp meets Gard’s demands
The sharp-shooting Austin Rapp put on an offensive show, despite failing to find his groove from deep. With the Portland Pilots, Rapp led all WCC players with 83 three-pointers last season, good for the second-most by any freshman in the country. He only made one of his six attempts from beyond the arc in the scrimmage, but he only missed one of his six from two.
“That’s something we’ve demanded of him and have emphasized he’s got to improve that game because that will open up his three-point shooting,” Gard said of Rapp’s inside scoring. “That’ll make that easier. And we, collectively, as a group, have to be better at scoring in the paint in some of the roles and getting out of screens cleaner and getting at the rim.”
While the room to grow remains, Rapp’s teammates will say his scoring ability, whether it be inside or out, is already complementing itself.
“Aussie got a lot of easy buckets and that’s what we gonna need from him,” Boyd said of Rapp in a post-scrimmage interview. “Just getting to the rim. That shot fake is deadly because you know he can knock it down.”
Rapp led Team White with 15 points, trailing only the tremendous performance by Boyd.
Nick Boyd leads all scorers, but leaves room for improvement
Boyd’s pair of game-winning free throws were the cherry on top of a 21-point outburst and a perfect 10 of 10 day at the charity stripe. On multiple occasions, the lead point guard for Team Red pushed the pace in transition, leading to his own quick layups or finding open shooters. Gard, however, was unsatisfied with the pace.
As Wisconsin basketball prepares to follow up a season in which it played a quicker adjusted tempo than ever before, Gard said after the scrimmage that he felt his team “didn’t keep the pace we want to all the time. We let off the pace at times.”
Although Gard was impressed with Boyd’s performance, “he was one of them that backed off the pace towards the end of the first half,” Gard said. “We talked about that at halftime. Keep our foot on the gas. It doesn’t mean you have to race it down and shoot it, but we have to come with a thrust, put pressure on the rim, and put pressure on the paint in transition.”
While Team White was pursuing its comeback bid, Boyd showed his defensive prowess, drawing a charge by Blackwell, a fitting exclamation point on the competitive duo that Gard goes out of his way to put on opposing teams in practice.
“That’s what I do. I try to make game-winning plays,” Boyd said of drawing the foul.
Notably, Special Assistant to the Head Coach Brad Davison was on the staff for Boyd’s Team Red.
Aleksas Bieliauskas aware of his own missteps
With six points on three of nine shooting and six rebounds, Aleksas Bieliauskas held his own on Sunday, but had a lackluster defensive performance. The Lithuanian freshman committed four personal fouls, struggling at times to defend without causing an official to blow their whistle.
Early on, freshman Will Garlock dribbled in the lane past Bieliauskas for a bucket. With under thirty seconds in the first half, Bieliauskas was caught reaching while defending Boyd on the perimeter, giving the offense a fresh shot clock, with which Boyd made a three at the buzzer. In the second half, Bieliauskas was again called for a foul on guard Braeden Carrington’s drive to the hoop.
“He got a couple fouls on the edges, and we talked about that at half. He asked about that,” Gard said of the 6-foot-10 forward. “He is a little too aggressive at times in the edge, but I’d rather have him that way than not attacking the ball. We, again, we’ve got a long ways to go on both ends. And we need to be really good defensively if we want to get to where we want to get to and where I think this team has the potential to be.”
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