Wisconsin basketball had 'a lot of things exposed' in exhibition
Greg Gard said after the 84-83 loss to the Oklahoma Sooners, Wisconsin basketball was "obviously not good enough" on Friday night
A Nick Boyd three-point basket made just before the buzzer gave Wisconsin basketball a one-point loss in its exhibition matchup with the Oklahoma Sooners. An imperfect Wisconsin Badgers comeback bid resulted in an 84-83 final score, but UW remains excited about the team it can become by March.
“It was fun out there, playing with those guys,” Wisconsin guard John Blackwell said of his first go-around with the 2025-26 Badgers. “I know we came up with the L, but I was smiling, you know? Those guys getting the crowd hyping. there’s a lot more moving forward.”
“This is a great environment and to play against this type of team and get a lot of things exposed,” Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard said in a postgame interview. “Areas that you can’t maybe learn about as in-depth during practice and to be able to come in and do this and see a team that can challenge you in different ways. I think this is great for us.”
Ultimately, a handful of hustle plays turned a game in which Wisconsin could not get within 4 points into one that came down to the wire.
An inbounds play, facilitated by Boyd to a dunking Nolan Winter, snowballed into a dominating five-possession stretch for the Badgers. After assisting on Winter’s bucket, Boyd drew an offensive foul at the other end, sparking a defensive run. Oklahoma came up empty on its next five offensive possessions, including one in which a Blackwell foul reset the shot clock and OU forward Derrion Reid collected an offensive rebound.
On the other end of the court, Wisconsin was on a similar offensive run, getting a bucket on four of its five possessions, including one where it finally scored after a pair of offensive rebounds.
Finding that rhythm showed the potential ceiling this Wisconsin basketball can reach, in a season that it still has plenty of room to grow.
“Those stops we got, we need to do those earlier in the game,” Blackwell said of the five-possession stretch. “We gotta work on that, and we’re going to get better than that.”
Wisconsin basketball has its offensive balance swatted away
After shooting an ice-cold 10-44 on threes in Sunday’s Red-White Scrimmage, the Badgers remained frigid in the first half against Oklahoma. With a 3-14 first half from beyond the arc, Wisconsin found itself in a halftime hole, trailing 41-46, as the Sooners connected on 8 of 12 from deep.
In the second half, Wisconsin improved from beyond the arc, shooting a respectable 7-17, but the added attempts came at the expense of its interior presence. UW scored only 12 points in the paint in the final 20 minutes, half as many as it did in the opening frame.
“There were times where we were not chemically balanced offensively tonight,” Gard said in a post-exhibition press conference. “I thought we dribbled too much. We didn’t move the ball enough—times we did, and then times that we didn’t. We pounded the air out of it a few times, and we need to get better and moving it and sharing it.
“There’s a few possessions we maybe took—I want to shoot threes. This group is going to have to shoot threes, and it’s how we’re built. But I thought, maybe, there was a handful we took that we didn’t need to take.”
Wisconsin could have had even more paint points in the first half, and perhaps would not have been psychologically forced out to the perimeter, if it were not for Winter having four of his first-half attempts blocked at the rim. The junior attempted eight twos in the first half and only three in the second half. On a night where no opposing player above the height of 6-foot-10 was in the lineup, the Badgers struggled tremendously to finish at the rim, much like they did a season ago.
Oklahoma head coach Porter Moser credited the efforts of Wauwautosa native Kai Rogers, who blocked three of Winter’s shots, for stepping into the moment as a freshman, acknowledging the young talent has plenty of room to grow.
“We have been really low on rim protectors, and we thought [Rogers] could block shots, and he actually blocked some shots tonight,” Moser said of the Overtime Elite product. “He’s got good hands. And just like a lot of freshmen, the game is sped up. The game is sped up to all freshmen in the country, and when they can get it to slow down, when you want to be good, and when you want to do good, you try really hard. And that’s Kai.
“He wants to do well. And when the game’s going fast like that as it happens for a lot of freshman, you start to think a little bit. When Kai starts to just play through a lot of stuff, he’s going to be really good. He’s really—he’s got really good hands. He’s got a long reach. He’s coachable. He’s got a lot of those characteristics you want.”
Greg Gard looking to “take a jump” defensively
Despite Wisconsin’s newfound offensive prowess, it will still struggle to win games in which it allows 84 points. The Badgers still lost three games last year in contests in which they scored at least 80 points, including a season-ending 91-89 loss to the BYU Cougars in the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament.
Before Wisconsin’s five-stop run, it struggled to string together multiple stops. As UW tried to battle back from the slim deficit in the second half, it did not force OU into back-to-back empty possessions until there were under 12 minutes left in regulation.
“I think this is great for us. We’ll take a jump from this, specifically defensively,” Gard said of playing the exhibition matchup against a high-major opponent. “I thought we, obviously, not good enough the first half. The second half—the back half of the second half—I thought we got started to get our footing a little bit. And some of its communication. Some of it’s guys not playing together. There’s miscommunication on switches. There’s miscommunication on when we weren’t switching. So, just things that we will continue to improve upon as we get more reps together.”
Blackwell also spoke to the preseason challenges of playing on a team that is effectively brand new. Wisconsin returned only six players from last year’s roster, its fewest of the Gard era.
“It’s our first time playing with each other against an opponent. So, you know, just jitters a little bit,” the Preseason All-Big Ten honoree said.
“We’ve got, obviously a long ways to go, but that’s the exciting part,” added Gard. “We better have a long ways to go in October. That’s good. That means the ceiling is high for this group.”
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