BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer
MADISON, Wis. — When Greg Gard went to his bench at Illinois and bypassed the regular subs in the rotation for seldom-used Aaron Moesch, the Wisconsin head coach sent a strong message to his reserves that playing time was not automatic and would have to be earned from game to game.
"To me, it's always exciting to see guys play that you work with every day — a guy like Moesch who's on the scout team with us," said guard Brevin Pritzl. "And it's exciting to see those hard-working minutes being rewarded in the game. Coach Gard kind of always mentions to me, 'Stay ready.'"
At 12:12 of the second half here Sunday afternoon, Gard made a hockey line change plus one. He subbed four players against Indiana, including Pritzl who last played against Rutgers at Madison Square Garden. Pritzl had been practicing well on the scout team. In short, he had stayed ready.
"I get a couple of reps here and there (with the starters in practice)," said Pritzl, a redshirt freshman from De Pere. "So if I get in, I know what I'm doing."
It showed. On a day when it was hard to score — the Badgers shot 39 percent from the field and made only 4-of-17 attempts from beyond the 3-point arc — Pritzl produced some timely scoring by matching his career-high with six points in Wisconsin's 65-60 win over the Hoosiers at the Kohl Center.
"He has gotten his swagger back," said UW head coach Greg Gard. "By that, I mean, he has always been known as a shooter. But when he got hurt, I felt when he came back, he didn't come back with the same level of toughness and appreciation for some of the other things that he was so good at.
"It has taken him awhile to get back in rhythm and figure out those are more important than maybe how pretty the ball looks going in. It's great that he can shoot it, but we need him to do some other things: the intangible pieces of the game.
"He needed to get his confidence back in those intangibles: diving on to the floor, guarding really well, rebounding, taking care of the ball. Those things are what we really value," Gard stressed. "And the bonus is that he can shoot the ball a little bit and score.
"He has been doing more and more of that over the last six to eight weeks. And gradually working his way towards gaining our trust more and more. I thought he did a terrific job today."
Pritzl, the all-time leading scorer at De Pere High School, fractured his foot prior to the start of the 2015-16 season, appeared in one game, reinjured the same foot and took a medical redshirt.
"The last couple of months, I've been getting the confidence back in my game," admitted the 6-foot-3, 195-pound Pritzl. "Coach Gard said it to me, too. It's all about getting back to who I was before I got hurt and kind of finding that mojo. I've done it a little more in practice."
Prior to Sunday, Pritzl had seen limited action in 12 games, four in the Big Ten. The most minutes he had played was 13 against Ohio State (Jan. 16). Twice, he had scored six points (Prairie View A&M and Florida A&M). His only two points in the league came against the Buckeyes.
A little over two minutes after entering the game against Indiana — with the Badgers clinging to a 35-33 lead — Pritzl refused to "settle" for an open 3-point jump shot from the left wing. Instead, he put the ball on the floor and scored on a driving layup sparking a 10-4 run.
"This is straight out of my brother but he always says take the easy one first," related Pritzl, whose brother, Brandon, was a four-year letterwinner at Hillsdale (Mich.) College and later a graduate assistant under Saul Phillips at Miami. "Shooting a 3 right off the bat, the first time you touch the ball, that's hard to do.
"Meech (D'Mitrik Trice) has done a phenomenal job of figuring that out. But I've never been in that position enough to be great at it. So when I saw the lane open up a little bit, I said, 'Okay, a lay-up.' It kind of got my juices flowing and definitely contributed to how I felt on the court the rest of the game."
Obviously, he had a good feel from the free throw line. After Indiana closed within four points, 50-46, he knocked down both shots at 4:34 of the second half. He went back to the stripe with 51 seconds left and made two more. For the season, he was 4-of-6 with both misses coming in the opener.
"The first two misses were bad, too, I should be 10-for-10, if I do say so myself," Pritzl said. "Free throws are always something I did well in high school. I shot 90-plus percentage. I have confidence in myself. If I just take my time and go through my routine, I shouldn't miss. Or I hope not to miss.
"I think coach Gard trusts me shooting free throws down the stretch."
The Badgers have been near the bottom of the Big Ten all season in free throw shooting percentage. At Illinois, they were 2-of-9. Meanwhile, they missed 10 free throws against Rutgers (18-of-28), 10 against Michigan (14-of-24) and 10 against Ohio State (5-of-15).
Sunday, they went 23-for-31 (.742) from the line which was their second highest percentage since the Big Ten opener when they were 21-of-28 (.750) against Rutgers at the Kohl Center. Nigel Hayes was the leader of the pack by making 7-of-8. He was 17-of-22 last year here against the Hoosiers.
Despite scuffling on offense, the Badgers got much needed points from the line and an unexpected lift from Pritzl who understandably couldn't help but wonder when he was going to be taken out of the game. As it turned out, Gard left him in for the duration.
"It's good to see that he has confidence in me to perform," Pritzl said.
And when that happened, he added, "I've got to have the confidence to perform."
Some Kohl Center carry-outs:
- In Wisconsin's last home game against Penn State, the Badgers executed an in-bounds lob from Bronson Koenig to Khalil Iverson who rocked the rim with a thunderous slam. They did again Sunday with Trice in-bounding to Ethan Happ, who was wide open for the dunk thanks to Zak Showalter who screened Happ's defender Juwan Morgan on the baseline. Happ had another player of the year line with 20 points, 7 rebounds, 3 blocks, 3 steals and 2 assists in 34 minutes.
- Although Vitto Brown is mired in a major shooting slump, he came up with a critical defensive stop by contesting a Josh Newkirk drive to the glass with 12.9 seconds remaining. Newkirk missed and Juwan Morgan fouled Bronson Koenig, who extended the lead to six points at the opposite end. Newkirk, the Pitt transfer, came right back with a triple in the final two seconds. He finished with 22 points for the Hoosiers, who were playing without their leading scorer, James Blackmon, for a third straight game.
- With his first 3-point hit against the Hoosiers, Koenig broke a second-place tie with Tim Locum for career triples with 228. Koenig added one more in the second half moving him closer to Ben Brust's school record of 235. Besides Brust, Koenig and Locum, the only other Wisconsin players to reach the 200 plateau are Kirk Penney (217), Michael Finley (213) and Jason Bohannon (212). The Big Ten record holder is Ohio State's Jon Diebler with 374.
