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Alright Badgers fans. The time has come. It has happened. The NCAA Tournament bracket has dropped and I have some thoughts, as I’m sure you do too.
So I’m going to blog through my thoughts and feelings on this.
The good news? Wisconsin kept the 3-seed.
I think after the very impressive run that Wisconsin had this weekend in the Big Ten Tournament, I don’t think many people were expecting any worse than a 3-seed.
But as it were, the committee gave Wisconsin the lowest 3-seed. Missing out on Milwaukee, which hurts the most. Kentucky got into Milwaukee, Iowa State got into Milwaukee. You can make the argument that neither had the resume that Wisconsin had, certainly Kentucky didn’t.
As you notice 14 SEC teams got in to this tournament. So it was pretty clear that the committee was regarding that league much differently than the Big Ten. So it’s the SEC’s year, I guess.
The first reaction is: being pissed. You’re pissed you’re the lowest 3. You’re pissed you’re not going to be in Milwaukee. Pissed you’re going to be traveling across the country to play in a high altitude city against teams who play in high altitude’s, including potentially BYU.
So it’s a little disappointing coming on the heels of a very frustrating day against the Michigan Wolverines, where it was pretty clear the team ran out of gas the final three minutes playing four games in four days against a team that played three games.
Badgers handsomely out-rebounded Michigan and their two 7-footers and you somehow can’t make a shot, couldn’t hit the ocean from a dock today. I believe it was 14% from 3-point range and 23% from the field. But it was a very good defensive performance today.
Back to the tournament. Badgers are a 3-seed, playing in the East Region. We’re going to go against Montana in the First Round. Montana is a good team, been playing hot, I think they’ve lost one game in the past two months. But they’re not a very good defensive team. But they’re a team that goes out and wins ball games. It’s not going to be an easy draw. Now if Wisconsin plays anything like it has, then this will be a dominant win for UW.
Wiscosin played Montana in the 2012 NCAA Tournament. A 73-49 UW win. But that’s irrelevant to this game of course. But renewing old rivalries I suppose. This is at least a reasonable draw.
With a win, Badgers would get the winner of BYU/VCU in the Round of 32. I’m not over joyed with seeing BYU, a high altitude team that plays in the mountains that plays much closer to home as the 6-seed against Wisconsin who had an objectively better season. So it’s a little bit of a tricky matchup, this is assuming both teams win the first round game, VCU is a tough team.
I’m not enamored with that. But it could be worse. There’s other 6’s out there that are really good. I’m having a hard time as far as the road ahead of us feeling too terrible about it. My issue is the travel, schedule and not playing in Milwaukee, which I’m beating that to death on Twitter and with my buddy who’s a Maryland alum. But here we go. It sucks. But it is what it is at this point.
Let’s say Wisconsin gets to the second weekend. Alabama is very good. Saint Mary’s is very good. That’s two extremely tough potential matchups.
It’s tantalizing to see Duke up there too as the 1-seed in the East. The team that stole the dream from us in 2015 along with the referees. But a chance to play Duke for a spot in the Final Four. Sign me up. But I digress.
My top line feelings are this: It’s ok to be frustrated with what the committee did to us today. Was certainly not the best case scenario. But if beating Michigan State yesterday was necessary to avoid the 4-seed, which seems like it might have been necessary given what happened today, but that was a really good run of basketball culminated with one day of bad basketball from kids who were exhausted. These past few days were a good weekend for Wisconsin.
It’s a little bit of a rough day for the Badgers in the sense of vibes. I don’t want to drill too much into the Michigan game today, but it was a very winnable game. Arms were heavy, legs were heavy, your opponent wasn’t as tired and your opponent was just banging ya every trip down the court and UW just ran out of gas with about three minutes left.
This is the same team that had absolutely flexed its guts and metal and toughness 24 hours before when they were beating a very good Michigan State team in a close game. I think that was more indicative of what this team is, not what they did when they were exhausted today. But, anyway, they had a chance.
One more thing really quick. I’m not a FBI behavioral scientist. But to see the UW squad when that bid was handed out. And UW saw 3-seed in Denver. To see the looks on their faces, they were not happy with that. I mean, obviously you want to play close to home. But I think this is beyond that. There’s a chance that they feel like they were jilted, and you know, these are 18-23 year olds, you never know how that’s going to impact them.
But this could be a rallying and motivating thing. Make ‘Em Believe. Let’s prove it to people. That committee doubts Wisconsin, they doubt them. I mean, there’s no other implication to draw from what happened today from that committee and that seeding and where they’re playing and when and who, than to think the committee is disrespecting the Wisconsin Badgers.
So yeah, there could be some good potential motivation for the Badgers, I don’t think you should need that but hey these are human beings and we all take different things from slights. Maybe they do, maybe they do take something from the slight. I do. I very much do.
They think UW isn’t worth it. They think a middle-to-lower tier SEC team like Kentucky who was playing marginally the past month, yeah they deserve Milwaukee and we don’t. That rubs me the wrong way.
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