Wisconsin Preview, 2024-25

Wisconsin Badgers

December 7th, 2024 at Fiserv Forum

Head Coach: Greg Gard (186-107)

Three-Year NET Average: 41.0

Three-Year kenpom Average: 38.3

Projected 2023-24 T-Rank: 41

Max Klesmit has mastered the "opponent is close, pretend I was fouled" motion.

Picture by Andy Manis | AP Photo

State of the Program

Wisconsin has long prided itself on stability. They rarely took transfers, their players didn't transfer out (unless they lost their love for the game), and they ran a system that always finished in the top-40 of kenpom (15 straight years from 2003-2017). All of this happened despite opposing fans regularly predicting the new Badger roster wouldn't be good enough. Last year's results mirrored that history, with A.J. Storr stepping up as the go-to scorer, Wisconsin starting the year 16-4, reaching the Big 10 Tournament final, and finishing #17 at kenpom. A late-season slump and upset loss to James Madison in the NCAA Tournament may have soured the season, but consistency and quality looked to be back. In terms of the roster, though, the times they are a-changing. Storr and three-year starting point guard Chucky Hepburn transferred out of the program, along with once heralded Connor Essegian. Gard reacted by bringing in a trio of transfers to bolster the roster. The question is will all the turnover have a negative impact on results.

Rotation

The first of the transfers is Camren Hunter, a prolific scoring guard from Central Arkansas. He's a solid inside-outside threat who made his team better at every level of offense. The downside is he's not a great defender and it's hard to assess how well a guy who has always been on sub-300 teams will adjust to high-major basketball. Max Klesmit has made that transition successfully. While he doesn't score as much as he did at Wofford due to lower usage, he had career highs in offensive efficiency, eFG%, and three point percentage while providing solid defense. John Blackwell will be the guy Bucky fans are hoping breaks out. He's a high-efficiency sniper who also excels at getting to the rim and the free throw line. Xavier Amos is the other likely transfer starter. The Northern Illinois transfer is a long athlete who is excellent both at the rim and at the arc. He's a lethal catch-and-shoot option (1.2 ppp/85th percentile) who like Hunter needs to show he can step up from sub-300 to high-major. Steven Crowl is somewhat unsung, but should be the star of this team. Crowl shot 44.8% from three, 61.6% at the rim, grabbed 9.9% of offensive rebounds, 21.5% of defensive rebounds, and did it all at a high efficiency. The bench is unproven but talented. Daniel Freitag looks like the next annoyingly good Badger guard. He's a productive scorer with great defensive length (6'8" wingspan) who should be a day one contributor. Don't be shocked if Freitag works his way into the starting lineup and is a breakout freshman. John Tonje was a high-level performer in the Mountain West at Colorado State, but will have to bounce back from an injury-plagued year at Missouri. Nolan Winter was supposed to be the impact freshman last year, but struggled to earn minutes.

Style of Play

At this point, Marquette fans should be almost as familiar with the Swing as Wisconsin fans are. Lots of ball movement, get the ball into the paint, then either finish there or continue moving the ball to get an open perimeter look. Lots of motion and cutting, running time off the clock, then finding the open shooter in the last 10 seconds of the shot clock. That said, Gard has tweaked his system based on roster composition more than Bo Ryan seemed to. Last year, he had a pair of driving guards in Hepburn and Storr who were not great outside shooters, which led to a heavier focus on shots at the rim. The bulk of last year's offense came from the drive or from cuts, as 57.3% of their actions were rim attack (29.5%), drive and kick (13.8%), perimeter cuts (10.3%), or big man cut and rolls (3.7%). They were in the 87th or better efficiency percentile in all of those plays, so Wisconsin maximized what they did well. When Gard had his best shooting teams, they shot heavier volume from three (2020 & 2021) and when he had Johnny Davis, his teams played faster (66.5 possessions/game in 2022 is the fastest by any Wisconsin team in kenpom's database going back to 1997). If Hunter, Amos, and Tonje can translate to the Big 10 they can legitimately put five shooters on the floor simultaneously. Expect this team to slow the pace and rain threes. With Crowl and Amos, there's the potential for more big-to-big high/low actions. Gard will likely have enough wrinkles to keep it effective.

Wisconsin knows what they do well and do that frequently
Graph from hoop-explorer.com

Defensively, the Badgers run man-to-man. They apply ball pressure, but do so without reaching to avoid fouls. The pressure isn't designed to turn teams over but to force the offensive player into help defense and bad looks. Wisconsin focuses heavily on how to defeat teams that screen, like Marquette. They are taught to both prevent the backside slip of a screen and to aggressively go over screens. They also extend their bigs to create defensive mismatches, which requires the bigs to be able to effectively play drop coverage. Crowl has been instrumental in this. Teams that play heavy drop coverage are often vulnerable on the defensive glass because the big men are extended away from the rim, but Crowl's defensive rebounding efficiency has led to the three best defensive rebounding rates of Gard's tenure, and the best rate since Frank Kaminsky was in Madison.

2024-25 Outlook

The consensus seems to be down on Wisconsin. T-Rank, ran by Wisconsin alum Bart Torvik, has the Badgers #41, which would be squarely on the bubble. Three Man Weave ranked Wisconsin as #57. Sports Illustrated pegged the Badgers as 12th in the Big Ten while 247 said 13th, all of which would likely be on the outside of the NCAA Tournament looking in. If Hunter and Amos can't adjust to the Big 10, if John Tonje doesn't bounce back to his pre-injury form, if Daniel Freitag isn't ready, there's a very real chance the floor is low for this team. Gard missing the tournament for the second time in two years would put him on the hot seat.

However, I suspect these outlets are underrating the Badgers. The first reason is A.J. Storr. Coaches, fans, and pundits alike all tend to overvalue volume scorers. Yes, Storr was productive, but as a team, Wisconsin was 4.6 points/100 possessions worse with him on the floor, and it was a negative margin on both ends of the court. When he was at St. John's, they were 12.6/100 worse with him on the floor, so it seems like it's an A.J. Storr thing. Chucky Hepburn was better, providing a 4.4 points/100 possessions improvement on offense but being 3.6 points/100 possessions worse on defense nearly offset that. When they played together, the Badgers were slightly better on offense, but they were terrible on defense leading to a net -13.0/100 with Hepburn and Storr on the court. Bottom line, while the players they lost significantly impacted the box score, their impact on winning basketball was far less evident. Storr and Hepburn are replaceable players. If Hunter and Amos are indeed high-major players, and their transfer offer lists indicate many coaches think they are, this Wisconsin team could exceed expectations and possibly be even better than last year's. This team may not have the flashy names or an appealing play style, but expect them to be better than the sum of the parts, near the top of the Big 10 again, and in the NCAA Tournament. They have the proven defense to make every possession matter and an offensive system that thrives when it has shooters, which they do. Don't expect it to be easy if Shaka Smart manages to get his first win over Wisconsin since taking the Marquette job.

Marquette Connection

With Wisconsin's current three-game winning streak over Marquette, there isn't a single player on the Marquette roster that has ever beaten Wisconsin. Head coach Shaka Smart has only coached against Wisconsin while at Marquette, so he also has never defeated the Badgers. On the Wisconsin side, there is only one player who has ever played in a game that was a loss to Marquette. It isn't long-time Badgers Steven Crowl or Carter Gilmore. Both were members of the 2020-21 team that lost to Marquette at an empty Fiserv in the COVID season, but neither played in that game. The only current Badger who has lost to Marquette is Xavier Amos, who was a part of the Northern Illinois team that lost last year's season opener at Marquette 92-70. Amos played 28 minutes, scoring 8 points and tallying 4 assists, but came up short as Marquette ran out to a 22-point halftime lead and held it the rest of the way.

Xavier Amos tries to stop Tyler Kolek in NIU's 2023 loss at Fiserv
Photo by Mark Hoffman | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel