Badgers' Guards Deliver on Sundays

Any time a Big Ten team travels on the road, there is no guarantee that they are winning the game no matter how much it seems like a given. Wisconsin-Penn State felt like one of those games with the possibility of going down to the wire especially at an early Sunday morning game in a half-full gym. Badgers grinded out the game and maintained their lead despite the Nittany Lions late charge, winning 71-66 with a big effort from Josh Gasser and Ben Brust along the Badgers finding a way to win without their big men having strong games.

The most underrated player on Wisconsin's roster is Josh Gasser. People really do not look at him when talking about Wisconsin because Gasser does not do anything 'great', but he does a ton of good things. He scored 15 points in a win with his fourth straight game with double-digit scoring yet people sort of forget Gasser is doing these sort of things for Wisconsin. Additionally, the shot selection has been great as he is averaging 66 percent from the field in these four games. Gasser held Penn State's star Tim Frazier in check with 10 points on only eight shots on the defensive end. The fact he still has another year at Wisconsin tells me there is still a ceiling for him.

After a couple games of struggle, Ben Brust had a big second half against Indiana and followed it up with another big game on Sunday.  He filled up the box score in more ways than just raining in three pointers as he added a couple rebounds, assists and a steal along with making threes. Brust had four threes in the game plus found a way to score otherwise getting 14 points total for the game. Wisconsin does not need to be a crazed outside shooting team when Brust is on point. It almost feels like when Brust is off, Wisconsin tries to force their outside shot to pick up Brust. This is what the Badgers need from Brust in March if they want to make a deep run. If him and Gasser can provide nearly 30 points like they did on Sunday, their odds of winning games are going to very high.  

What's something that might go unnoticed with Wisconsin's win against Penn State was Sam Dekker and Frank Kaminsky both struggled mightily despite the Badgers strong effort. This is the first time in awhile where we have seen both of them struggle and Wisconsin win the game. That's extremely important even though Penn State are not world-beaters by any means. Additionally, this means I am curious to see if the result would have  differ if this was an average or above average Big Ten. If Wisconsin can figure out way to win without those two being at their peak performance, that makes this team an even bigger threat in March.

It appears like Wisconsin is locked into playing in-state for their first two games of their NCAA Tournament unless they find a way to lose their last three games which is highly unbelievable. Badgers rounded back into form at the right time of the season and will likely get rewarded for it.

Charlie.