The last time Wisconsin went into the Breslin Center and knocked off the Spartans, Bo Ryan was in just his third year as head coach of the Badgers.
Needless to say, it’s been awhile.
Wisconsin (8-4 Big Ten, 16-9 overall) will take on No. 8 Michigan State (8-5, 21-5) Thursday night at 8 p.m. looking to snap an eight-game losing streak in East Lansing that dates back to 2004. Due to conference realignment, the Badgers haven’t played at the Breslin Center since March 7, 2013, when they lost 58-43 to the Spartans.
The only current UW player who appeared in that game is redshirt junior guard Zak Showalter, who saw just one minute of playing time.
“I don’t know the score, but I know it wasn’t pretty,” Showalter said of his previous experience in East Lansing. “I’ve only been to Breslin one time, so I’m excited. I know a lot of our guys are excited because they’ve never been there, obviously.”
Though Wisconsin hasn’t won at the Breslin Center in over a decade, it’s far from the only team that has struggled in East Lansing. The Spartans boast one of the best home-court advantages in all of college basketball, going 177-25 at home since the start of the 2004-05 season. Wins are obviously awfully tough to come by for road teams, but Showalter thinks that their win over Maryland in College Park gives them the confidence that they win in those tough environments.
“I think we’ve got confidence now that we can go into anywhere and compete with teams,” he said. “I think the two games where we really struggled on the road this year were Oklahoma and Northwestern. I think we’ve kind of gotten that out of our system, hopefully, and we’re playing with more confidence on the road and treating it like any other game.”
The Badgers have had success recently out on the road. Since the start of the 2013-14 season, they’ve gone 41-12 away from home, tied with Villanova for the most road/neutral wins among major conference teams. This year’s team is only 5-4 away from home, but junior forward Nigel Hayes has been trying to tell some of his younger teammates that it’s all just a matter of perspective.
“[It’s about] the way we’ve got to look at things,” Hayes said of playing in hostile road environments. “For instance, at Maryland, it’s like a home game. Everybody’s wearing red. We’re red. The whole student section was screaming my name; I’ve never had so many fans.”
Wisconsin is riding a seven-game winning streak into East Lansing, so a lack of confidence shouldn’t be an issue for the Badgers. Since a 1-4 start to Big Ten play that left them starting down the barrel of an NIT appearance, the Badgers have orchestrated an incredible turnaround to get back in the NCAA Tournament picture, starting with their dramatic, last-second win over the Spartans back on January 17.
Wisconsin has made remarkable strides since, culminating in last Saturday’s win over the Terrapins.
“For our guys to show maturity to go into that environment and execute pretty much from start to finish, it wasn't flawless, like I said, we have several things we'll look at today on film, but to be able to stem the tide and handle foul trouble and be able to close that game out, I thought that really showed how far this team has come,” UW interim head coach Greg Gard said.
That win, which put the Badgers on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble in almost all bracketology projections, was thanks in large part to the performance of junior forward Vitto Brown, who scored a career-high 21 points.
Brown has been a key player in Wisconsin’s recent success, as he’s become a consistent contributor on the offensive end. After going 0 for 5 from 3-point range in UW’s first seven Big Ten games, he’s gone 9 of 16 and has hit at least one three in each of the past five contests.
“He's matured in so many ways, which is great to see as a coach,” Gard said of Brown’s improvement. “He's always been a pretty decent perimeter shooter, but for him to understand how he can get those shots, why he gets those shots, how to play better defense, all those things he had to grow through and learn I think helped him become a more complete player.”
If the Badgers are to knock off Michigan State at the Breslin Center for the first time since 2004, they may need another big performance from Brown. A raucous environment will surely be waiting for them Thursday night, but Gard has stressed that Tom Izzo’s Spartans are what they need to be most concerned about, not the crowd.
“Obviously, the fan base there (at Michigan State) is terrific. That's a great environment for college basketball,” Gard said. “But as I told the team Saturday night before we were in the pregame, those 17- or 18,000 that are in there, they don't matter. They don't play defense, they don't rebound, they can't shoot, so it's just our five against their five, and then our four or five, six, whoever comes off the bench. Just do your job.”
