Wisconsin on the way out

[detroitbasketball]

Last night the #20 Badgers were embarrased by Pepperdine, 75-61. It's looking like the Badgers reign as a Big Ten contender has come to an end...what do you think? I know jami will have an opinion.

[bmaster]

Big deal, the Badgers lost to Pepperdine. North Carolina lost to Santa Clara and then won the Maui Invitational without even being challenged.

[SlammySammy2121]

Oh, I will have an opinion as well, I'm a huge Badger fan, and I knew that this year, wasn't going to be great at all. We lost Devin Harris, but we still got a few guys left, but Illinois, my homestate, is just probably gonna own the Big Ten, hell, maybe even the NCAA...

[detroitbasketball]

Michigan State is going to own the Big Ten.

[Terps2k3]

We'll see how they fair in the ACC/Big Ten challenge.

[Jami]

I'll try not to get into a long winded rant here, just for your sake DB.

Everyone knew that the Badgers were going to be a question mark this season in the Big Ten without Devin Harris. The AP knew it, thus the #20 ranking to start the season instead of a Top 10 rating they would have gotten with Devin still in Mad-Town.

With Devin, the Badgers would have been a popular pick for the Final Four, and I think even you could admit that DB. Without him, the Badgers are left with Alando Tucker to do a bunch of the scoring, and he hasn't proven that he can do that yet. Not to mention that the Badgers now have to rely on a three-man rotation at point guard consisting of Kammron Taylor (sophomore), Shariff Chambliss (i think he's a junior), and Michael Flowers. Taylor barely played last year, Flowers is unproven, and Chambliss is working his way back from a knee injury. Overall, an unsteady group.

The Badgers bench is still their biggest strength, IMO. With Clay Boy (Clayton Hansen) and Zach Morley coming off the bench, you have two very good shooters. The freshman Greg Stiemsma getting hurt and missing a great deal of time (I think I heard it'll be a couple months), you lose a back up for Brian Butch.

To cut this short, this could easily be an off year for the Badgers, but they'll still make it into the NCAA Tournament easily, and I'd say they have an outside shot at the Sweet Sixteen if they can stay relatively healthy and don't make dumb mistakes. I'll agree with you DB that MSU is one of the favorites to take the Big Ten title, along with Illinois (IMO, one will take the regular season title and the other the tournament title), but Iowa looks like they'll be damn good this year, too.

Bottom line, the Badgers are a year away from recovering from Devin yet (they were totally unprepared for him leaving - nobody saw him having a breakout season of such big proportions last year). Like bmaster said, UNC lost to freaking Santa Clara - the non-conference games mean next to nothing.

But that Maryland game scares the hell out of me. It's going to be ugly.

[Terps2k3]

It'll be fun Jami, don't worry. Seriously I do think it'll be a good game, ACC/Big 10 challenge games are always fun to watch.

I dunno why I'm so cocky about the Terps this year. I haven't been this confident in them since the National Championship run in 2002. I guess it's because Gilchrist is like Juan Dixon in that he can carry the team (as he did last year in the ACC Championship), but their frontcourt, while decent, isn't like 2002, and won't match up well with teams that're loaded up top. The Terps have a loaded backcourt though.

[Terps2k3]

Well just to prove I have cojones, I wanted to congratulate Wisconsin for beating Maryland in a pretty tight game. The Badgers played pretty d**n well, and exposed some UMD weakness. Gilchrist didn't have a good game shooting, and Garrison was inconsistent at best. Nice game by both teams however.

I dunno why, I still have a cocky feeling about Maryland this year.....