The former UCLA coach who took the Bruins to five Sweet 16s, Steve Lavin will be covering the Badgers game tonight for ESPN.
Wisconsin can regroup and get back to their winning ways
The challenge for a coaching staff and the players is to find a way to reinvent themselves and be successful again with this particular team. In a sense, when you lose two players in your rotations, you're starting over and looking to find and search for an identity and a style of play that will allow you to be competitive or will put yourself in position to be able to win basketball games in the deepest confrence in the conference.
The key is to not overreact and see that the conference is a marathon, not really a sprint. And yet, you still have to win enough games so that you can make the NCAA tournament.
How UW can improve on rebounding with such a slim front-line
What you focus and emphasize in practice and games is where you see the quickest results, so it's focusing on the areas that can put your team in a situation to be successful. There are adjustments: You can play your defense a little tighter, in your man to man, to protect the basket area, the paint area, and have more of a collective effort on the boards, in terms of focusing on the guards getting back in there, as well as the big men. And you can look at playing some zone defense. Adjusting to certain personnel that you have mid season, sometimes you create a dimension within your team that becomes a real strength or an asset for the particular season.
Offensively, the Badgers have not been patient
Against a set defense, Bo Ryan's teams have traditionally sliced people up, cut people up because of their ball movement, their man movement, their spacing, their recognition in terms of when to attack and when to exploit opportunities. And I think during this tough stretch, they haven't demonstrated the patience that we've seen when his teams are playing their best basketball.
Key to stopping the potent Indiana offense
With this particular team, Wisconsin has to change up and give Indiana different looks.If you only focus on [Marco] Killingsworth, they have such a prolific 3-point attack. They can beat you from behind the 3-point line. It's going to be impertiive that the post players step up on the defensive side of the floor in terms of position and not giving any angles for Killingsworh to get to the basket, and then pick your spots in terms of where the help is going to come from.
