In a one-way-traffic mismatch that never pointed to any remote hint of parity, it’s hard to write about the particulars of combat, such as they were.
The Baylor Bears were as flat as tortillas in Anaheim, Calif., while the Wisconsin Badgers blended crisp execution with productive thrusts of energy on the glass. Baylor’s zone defense rolled out a red carpet in the paint for Wisconsin, and the Badgers knew how to exploit the Bears from opening tip to final horn. Preparation, intensity, playmaking, responsiveness — these core basketball qualities all lined up in Wisconsin’s favor, and the result was a blowout that shouldn’t be seen as much of a surprise.
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The intrigue associated with this game lay in the reality that Wisconsin teams have not only bowed out of the NCAA tournament to lower seeds; they’ve done so by considerable margins at times. Wisconsin lost by 17 to Davidson as a 3 seed in 2008. The Badgers lost by 18 to Cornell in 2010. They lost by 11 to Ole Miss last year. All three of those losses were to teams seeded at least seven notches lower.
If Baylor — the owner of gifted physical specimens and players with well-delineated roles — had been able to deliver a beatdown of the Badgers that was almost as substantial as the thumping it handed Creighton on Sunday, such an event would not have been a novel occurrence. This felt like a game in which either team could have won by 20.
Unfortunately for Baylor, its nightmare scenario — Wisconsin’s perfect one — unfolded.
The Badgers’ precision and clarity flummoxed the scrambling, always-a-step-late Bears (as shown in the cover photo above). At the other end of the floor, Baylor — playing in a different region of the country after enjoying a home-state advantage in San Antonio for its subregional pod — just couldn’t manufacture its own energy in a building that was dead. The late game between San Diego State and Arizona was the crowd magnet in Anaheim; Aztec and Wildcat fans waited to enter the Honda Center. Therefore, Baylor faced the exact opposite of the boisterous and friendly scene it used to its benefit against Nebraska and Creighton.
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It will be fascinating to see how this game is spun by the college basketball commentariat. The previous few days witnessed an increase in the number of columns praising Baylor head coach Scott Drew, who has been a pinata for columnists over the years due largely to recruiting tactics and the spectacular nature of flameouts in the seasons when the Bears have missed the NCAAs.
One of the more convincing points made in defense of Drew is that before this game against Wisconsin, he stood on the cusp of a third Elite Eight in the past five seasons. The ability of Drew to develop several players while at Baylor (think Quincy Acy) coexisted with his whiffs in other cases (see Perry Jones).
The failures did indeed gain more traction than the successes. Why? The yo-yo nature of Baylor basketball since 2008 — make the tournament one year, miss the tournament the next — has lent itself to the perception that this is a volatile and inconsistent program. Narrowly, that’s true. Moreover, it’s also true that with this loss tonight to Wisconsin, Drew has beaten only one single-digit seed (third-seeded Creighton this past Sunday) in his NCAA tournament career.
Seeing this decisive loss — one in which Drew’s team was clinically carved up by Bo Ryan’s boys — could easily give new life to the perception that Drew still shouldn’t be considered a particularly good coach. If you wanted to create a scenario in which Drew would be freshly doubted, Thursday night’s game offered the perfect portrait.
Yet, for all of the ways in which everything fell apart for Baylor, the far better point of emphasis should be on the team that waxed the Bears and sent them home.
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Wisconsin has certainly played its share of painfully boring games in past years. The 36-33 loss to Penn State in the 2011 Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals comes to mind. In the past, Wisconsin has played at a slower pace while owning a more airtight defense. The Badgers reveled in their ability to play a 24-19 type of first half. They got under their opponents’ skin precisely because they were relentless in imposing a distinctly structural form of control over the opposition… and the way in which a game was played.
However, one has to acknowledge when a longstanding reputation is shed, and one identity gives way to a more complex and layered truth. Such is the case with the 2013-2014 Badgers.
Frank Kaminsky is the main reason this season’s Wisconsin team can’t be so easily pigeonholed. Kaminsky is the rangy all-spots-on-the-floor big man Bo Ryan periodically manages to haul into Madison, but unlike predecessor Jared Berggren, there’s a bit of Nijinsky (the ballet dancer referenced by the late, great Pittsburgh Steeler broadcaster Myron Cope) in Kaminsky. He can glide to the hoop and occasionally put the ball on the deck. He possesses a developed array of moves near the basket and on the perimeter. He is comfortable shooting a three and working in the post. He can play with his back to the basket, and as a face-up player.
Kaminsky is such a formidable multi-skill centerpiece that his inside-outside virtuosity commands attention while also changing Wisconsin’s offensive look depending on the way in which he’s deployed. Kaminsky dominated Baylor’s Isaiah Austin on Thursday in the game’s foremost confrontation, and that set the tone for everything else that happened when Wisconsin had the ball.
The Badgers are not what they used to be. Though perhaps not as stingy on defense — you might recall how easily Michigan moved through UW in Madison in January, as well as the way in which Michigan State enjoyed knife-through-butter smoothness in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals — Wisconsin doesn’t get bogged down on offense the way it used to.
The result is a more versatile team that’s better able to adapt to changing in-game situations. More to the point, this is no longer a team that has only one way in which to play.
Wisconsin has never been seeded higher than second since NCAA tournament seeding began in 1979. Bo Ryan had a second-seeded team in 2007, but it faded against UNLV in the round of 32. This team has put some heft behind that “(2)” on the bracket sheet. The Badgers’ brilliance, not Baylor’s coach, decided this game in Southern California.
We’ll see if the national narrative agrees or not.
