Midseason surge lifted Wisconsin just at the right time

BECAUSE of its name and affiliation to one of the "Power Five" conferences, Wisconsin doesn't raise a lot of eyebrows by being in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.

The Badgers were coming off consecutive trips to the Final Four.

Still, a lot has happened to the Wisconsin program since it lost to Duke, 68-63, in the 2015 NCAA championship game.

First, the Badgers lost five of their top seven players, including National Player of the Year Frank Kaminsky, Sam Dekker and Duje Dukan to the NBA.

With five incoming freshmen, Wisconsin, for the first time in five seasons, had no seniors in the projected starting lineup. Then after the 12th game of the season, longtime coach Bo Ryan, the architect of Wisconsin's recent success, pushed his retirement status from "at the end of the season" to "effective immediately."

Associate coach Greg Gard was promoted to interim head coach and told to make the best of the situation.

On Jan. 12, the Badgers were 9-9, including a 1-4 start to the Big ten schedule. An NCAA Tournament bid was the furthest thing from anyone's mind.

Given where Wisconsin was at that time, the fact that it is in Philadelphia to play in an East Region semifinal game Friday night at the Wells Fargo Center is one of the bigger surprises of the Sweet 16.

That's what can happen when a team finds its direction, does a 180-degree turn by closing the regular season 11-3 and carries that momentum in the opening rounds of the NCAA Tournament.

January will be a distant memory when the seventh-seeded Badgers (22-12) face sixth-seeded Notre Dame (23-11). Top-seed North Carolina (30-6) plays No. 5 Indiana (27-7) afterward.

"Well, the biggest thing was the chemistry in the locker room," said Gard, who recently had the interim tag removed and signed a five-year deal to be head coach. "That grew immensely during that time from late December through the first part of February.

"We had a lot of shoes to fill and a lot of roles to establish. It took us a while to grow through that.

Gard had been an assistant to Ryan since 2001. In 2008, he was named associate coach, which included duties as the Badgers' recruiting coordinator.

Only the title was different. All of the important stuff was the same. He knew the players, and they knew what to expect from him.

"I really felt this has been as seamless a transition as I can - well, I don't have anything to compare it to," said Gard, who started out 2-4. "From Day 1, (the players) understood what the plan was.

"It took us a little while, maybe, to take steps towards that plan from an everyday standpoint."

Gard said he sought advice from other coaches, but ultimately decided to take things back to the basics of what he already knew and was comfortable with - Ryan's Swing Offense.

Take things back to the beginning.

"The first thing I thought is I had to go back to what I believed in and what my instincts were," Gard said. "We didn't have a group that had played a lot of basketball together. (The Swing) gave our younger guys a comfort level; a continuity offense helped them, put them on the right track, so to speak.

"I talked to the team about the process and not worrying about the scoreboard. We had to change some practice habits. It was really drill by drill, possession by possession. Eventually, that started to form better habits in the game. Even when we started 1-4, I saw a lot good things happening."

Still, the Badgers players needed positive results as reinforcement. Wins weren't coming, and frustration was growing.

Things erupted publicly on Jan. 12 in the aftermath of a 70-65 loss at Northwestern. Badgers junior forward and leading scorer Nigel Hayes told the assembled media, "I'm (bleeping) pissed."

Behind closed doors, Hayes, who doesn't typically yell or cuss, told his teammates they should be embarrassed. He talked about soul-searching and figuring out why they were playing the game and what they wanted out of it.

It was the moment that brought everything together for the Badgers.

The next game, the Badgers beat then fourth-ranked Michigan State, which propelled them on to a season-altering seven-game winning streak that also featured wins over No. 19 Indiana and at second-ranked Maryland.

"The message I was trying to spread to the guys was that not only collectively are we better than that, but individually we're better players than what we have been playing like," Hayes said.

"In order for us to do something, do what we all expect we can do and start actually winning some games. Once guys embodied that, our play picked up. We just tried to ride that confidence and wave from here on out."

Wisconsin is the only team to reach the Sweet 16 in five of the last six seasons. Two more wins will move the Badgers to a third straight Final Four.

Nobody could have envisioned that in the middle of January.

@SmallTerp