How bad was Wisconsin’s loss to Oregon on Saturday?
It was, without question, the Wisconsin Badgers’ low point of the season in terms of the vibes. Losing a 17-point second half versus a solid but hardly special Oregon team after an inexplicable and uncharacteristic series of late-game mistakes, was an indisputable gut punch and sent Badger fans into a hand-wringing tizzy on social media.
“Fire Gard!” was making an unexpected, unironic comeback in what had been, to that point, a dream season, with the then 21-5 Badgers making a serious push for an unexpected Big Ten crown and finding themselves the “it” team for many pundits, occupying more than a few 2-seed Bracketology lines.
While the Wisconsin Basketball bandwagon was notably lighter after the Ducks’ game, I’m here to tell you that, while the irritation that comes with a gut-punch loss was more than justified, there need to be exactly zero long-term worries about what happened in the Kohl Center on Saturday for these three reasons.
1. The Oregon Game Was a Perfect Storm
In order for that game to even make it to OT, a series of wildly inexplicable and unlikely events had to stack on top of each other perfectly for Oregon: ice-cold shooting/overall clunky offensive execution, subpar closeouts on Ducks’ shooting, and absolutely head-scratching turnovers. And they all happened.
There’s a reason that Wisconsin was still at a 95 percent chance to win in ESPN BPI with around three minutes left: they almost certainly weren’t going to lose. And it took several highly unusual things combined for it to happen.
Many fans suggested that teams have a blueprint to beat the Badgers now. To this, I say: good luck to the other squads trying to repeat something so statistically odd.
This has massive one-off vibes, while the rest of the 27-game season has been icily consistent. Which are you picking as the more accurate version of this team moving forward?
2. Analytics Don’t Lie
One of the first things I did as a curious fan was check on how the KenPom analytics processed the loss, because, over the years, it has been notoriously reliable in ranking quality teams without the sorts of weighty biases that burden the AP and NET Rankings.
And, unshockingly, Wisconsin dropped a bit, but only to No. 9, holding on to its elite offensive efficiency numbers despite a clunker.
In other words, this computer model coolly recognized the Oregon game as an outlier. This is a really damn good offensive squad with a defense not terribly dissimilar from 2014-15’s from an analytics perspective.
No, I don’t think this team is as good or talented as that one, but it shares some traits that give me confidence in it. Even the more human-generated NET Rankings only dropped Wisconsin two spots.
A 2-seed is still in shouting distance for the Badgers after their first Quad 2 loss of the season to an Oregon team currently tied for the second most Quad 1 wins in college basketball at nine.
3. This Streaking Team Has Both Talent And Grit
One of the most disappointing things that I observed after the game was how quickly fans seemed to forget about not only a season full of strong performances, including in late-game situations, against a Top 20 strength of schedule, but the absolute heater the squad has been on in February.
A 5-0 record including signature wins at Purdue and against Illinois (who the Badgers had not beaten since 2019) was no fluke and can’t simply be tossed aside after a clunker. Wisconsin is a Big Ten best 5-1 this month, as bad as Saturday felt on a micro level, in a macro sense this team is still hot.
So, let Saturday sting. It was an objectively rough game. But then start looking ahead to Washington and Michigan State, because you can be 100% certain that the team is.