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The Wisconsin Badgers lost to the James Madison Dukes 72-61 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and exited early again in March.
After the game, coach Greg Gard spoke to the media and analyzed his team’s efforts in the disappointing loss.
Initial statement
GREG GARDE: First of all, congratulations to James Madison. Even more impressive in person than in the movie, and I was really impressed with them in the movie. I thought we were bothered by his pressure, specifically in the first half, obviously with 13 turnovers, they really attacked us. We didn’t handle it exceptionally well and when we did, we sometimes couldn’t finish around the rim and missed some easy shots.
But how this group fought in the second half to get back to six. When you have 13 turnovers and shoot 26 percent in the first half, you’ve really dug yourself a hole, but this group hasn’t quit all year. And, you know, to get back to six twice, and shots to get it close, they gave everything they had and left it on the court.
I’m very proud of what Tyler, obviously our only senior, has given to this program and these guys to my left. I never had to train effort, and when you don’t have to train effort, you can have a lot of good things. Things happen that this group has done. So this is going to hurt us for quite a while because we felt like we obviously could have played better, but we’ll absorb it and move on.
Q. You talked about Tyler being a senior, but a lot of this team returned from last year. How tough is this loss, especially given the momentum you guys had since Big Ten Tournament?
GREG GARDE: Well, anytime you get to this point in the year, any loss is going to be tough because you fight and fight and work all year to get to this tournament. And then, as we’ve seen with every other game, you have 40 minutes, and if you have one bad segment of those 40, like we had 20 bad ones, then you’re playing uphill like we did.
Yes, it burns because you put a lot into this. This wasn’t just… you weren’t just preparing for this for four days after Selection Sunday. You’ve been working toward this since last June. These guys have invested a lot in this and have seen the tears and the emotion, because it means a lot and they have committed and sacrificed a lot to give to this team.
Q. You talked about missing some shots at the rim. Do you think pressure leads to rushing those shots?
GREGORY: I mean, the pressure of the game is real. You’re not going to deny it. But I thought their physicality made us turn the ball over early, and then I felt like we were also hustling sometimes when turnovers occurred because of the physicality. We had some unforced errors where we accelerated and knocked the ball wide.
And yes, we didn’t finish around the rim. We had some pretty close range looks and even we didn’t shoot the free throw line as well as we did. I thought offensively, specifically in the first half; Defensively, we held them to under one point per possession in the first half. There were only 13 turnovers and 26 percent shooting. That’s pretty useless when you shoot so low.
Normally, if you turn the ball around a lot, at least you shoot it better because the shots you don’t hit, you are throwing it far away and it doesn’t count against you. But in the first half we suffered a double blow.
Q. You said in your opening statement that you would absorb this and move on. What does that look like? When you don’t make the tournament one year and you don’t win it the next, do you have to look in the mirror and try to figure out how you can get this program back to where you want it?
GREG GARDE: Well, I mean, you play this and you’re in a one-game playoff, so anything can happen. This group wanted to win a Big Ten championship. We didn’t get there. We made it to the finish line last week in Minneapolis, and they didn’t get that. And they wanted to win and advance in this.
So in a 40-minute game, if you don’t play well, as I’ve said hundreds of times, you go home. So for us, we struggled with turnovers and shot selection all year, and those sins came back to haunt us again tonight, with more turnovers than perhaps ever. This could be our highest-billing game all year. It probably is.
But those things, that’s why you fight all year and teach and train, to not have that situation where you don’t turn the ball over and you don’t make bad shots, and you use all those lessons throughout the year to get to this point so that that doesn’t happen.
Much of this is also due to James Madison. Like these guys said, we’ve never seen a team really attack us and we knew they would. Everyone we talked to who played them said they were going to come at you and foul you, and it was going to be physical and they were going to reach and grab. And you have to be able to handle it, and we didn’t at the beginning of the game.
Like I said, 13 turnovers in 36 possessions in the first half is a recipe for disaster, but this group found a way to bounce back and take better care of the ball in the second half. The problem was that the hole we had dug was too deep.
Q. In today’s transfer portal era, you probably had to re-draft a lot of guys last year. Do you expect to have some this offseason and what is your proposal to get these guys back for another year?
GREG GARDE: We’re 15 minutes from the end of the game, so I don’t know. They don’t know it. I mean, we see the world we’re in. We will have conversations. A lot of guys, all but Tyler, have the option to come back, and there will be other options, I’m sure. If the guys want to test the waters on the draft or get feedback. We haven’t had those conversations yet. We are so raw after the end of the game.
And like I said, just look at the landscape, that’s the environment we’re in. So you have to face it and prepare. It could be a hundred different ways. But this core is really good. They are very tight. That locker room is pretty emotional right now and that told me, or tells me, that it’s not the first time I’ve seen an emotional locker room, but that tells me that they’re here for the right reasons.
That’s what they’re here for and they did a really good job representing the front of that jersey. But we are in a different era. There are many individual options that people have.
Q. This was your sixth tournament appearance. You’ve had a couple first-round exits, second-round exits and you’ve been to the Sweet 16. Where does this loss hurt, in terms of how much it hurts, given how well your team performed, how does this one rank? compared to the rest?
GREG GARDE: I don’t compare years because each team is different in itself. In 2013, Arizona beat us in the first round, but we turned around and made it to the Final Four the next year. I don’t like to compare years because the players are different. The momentum throughout a season is different. Your season ebbs and flows differently. This one sucked because this group had worked hard, they had high goals, and they had played very well.
You know, like I said, we didn’t play well tonight and this isn’t a seven-game series. So you put in your best hand and if it’s not good enough, you go home.