The Wisconsin Badger men's basketball team (8-1) is sure to encounter its fair share of ups and downs, as any team does in its five-month season.
As it stands now though, this is a group with confidence after a white-knuckle, down-to-the-wire 54-51 win over UNC-Wilmington Monday night at the Kohl Center.
'I definitely think [Monday] was a confidence booster,' said junior point guard Kammron Taylor, who hit a three-pointer as time expired to give his team the victory.
'I just think it was a confidence booster for pretty much everybody on the team. Things weren't going our way for most of the game. Yet, we were still able to pull it out,' he said.
Taylor, who is averaging 16 points per game and sports an impressive 52.3 percent 3-point percentage, said that a win in Monday's fashion should silence a lot of critics who had doubts about UW's experience.
'A game like that gives us more confidence,' he said. 'People are going around saying, 'We're a young team, we're inexperienced.' To pull out a game like that against an experienced team ... it's definitely a confidence booster.'
Taylor added that the win should especially help out some of the younger players on the team, who are just beginning to learn about the importance of intangibles in the early going.
'Coach threw them in there, and they gave us a big boost of the bench,' Taylor said. 'Joe Krabbenhoft, he came in and hit some big shots when we weren't scoring. At the end, [DeAaron] Williams got in there, got some rebounds, played some tough defense. Marcus Landry, he played solid.'
Senior guard Ray Nixon also shared the opinion that the team will carry confidence over from the win to Thursday's match-up against former Badger assistant coach Rob Jeter and UW-Milwaukee, but pointed out that there's much room for improvement.
'It's a great boost of confidence for our team,' he said. 'But we have to get better. There's a lot of things we have to work on. It's a great wake-up call.'
The Badgers' leading scorer, junior Alando Tucker, said that the ability to pull out a win in the manner it did against the Seahawks speaks volumes about the growth and ability of the team.
'We're constantly battling,' Tucker said. 'A Wisconsin team will never give up. We weren't hitting shots, but we were also holding them to not hitting shots.
'Confidence wise, it's always big. It's big when you can pull out a game like that when things are not going your way the whole game. For us to pull out a win in the last couple minutes, we made some big plays. I think that shows that we're maturing.'
Butch sits out
Center Brian Butch sat out practice Tuesday with a lower right leg injury. The sophomore, who has started every game this season and leads the team in rebounding (6.3), is day-to-day, according to a team spokesman.
