MIKE LUCAS Senior Writer

BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer

MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin takes on No. 1 seed Baylor in the second round of the 2021 NCAA Tournament on Sunday. Here are three things to know:

"I think you'll find it's the exact same measurements as our gym back in Hickory"

When the Badgers walk into Hinkle Fieldhouse prior to Sunday's game in Indianapolis, Greg Gard is not expected to morph into Norman Dale and have one of his players measure the distance from the free throw line to the rim and the height of the rim to the floor. He will trust that they are 15 and 10 feet, respectively. So will Baylor head coach Scott Drew who's no stranger to the storied venue where the final scenes from the movie "Hoosiers" were filmed.

Drew, the son of Hall of Fame coach Homer Drew, graduated from Butler University ('93), which plays its home games at Hinkle. Although he never played basketball (tennis was his sport), he was the team manager for a couple of years and he's well-versed on the history of the Fieldhouse, one of the oldest in the country. Hinkle opened in early March of 1928, not long after the opening of Williams Arena (aka The Barn) in Minneapolis. For context, the UW Field House in Madison opened in 1930. Further context: Gard was Bo Ryan's chief assistant when the Badgers opened the 2003 season with a victory over Penn in Philadelphia at the fabled Palestra ("The cathedral of college basketball'') which opened its doors one year earlier than Hinkle ("Indiana's basketball cathedral").

Both the Badgers and Bears will likely have more than just one shining moment Sunday, weather permitting, because of the sun shining on the court from the Hinkle windows, one of the more unique characteristics of the building. Neither team will have the benefit of a shootaround. On the Hinkle shooting background, Drew said, "That's why being in a good shooting gym is important, especially to our team that shoots so many 3's. That's critical."

Baylor leads the nation in 3-point percentage (.414) and has five players shooting at least 40 percent from the arc and five averaging one made 3 per game. Meanwhile, Drew's younger brother, Bryce, made one of the most famous 3-pointers in Big Dance history. Valpo was trailing Mississippi in the 1998 tournament with only 2.5 seconds left. The ball was inbounded to Bill Jenkins (a cheesehead from Nicolet High School) who one-touched a pass on the wing to Bryce Drew, now the head coach at Grand Canyon, for the game-winning triple. An instant classic.

At that, no one the UW roster is more excited about playing in Hinkle than D'Mitrik Trice whose father, Travis Sr. transferred from Purdue after his sophomore year to Butler where he played his final two seasons and led the Bulldogs in assists with 131 and 140 while averaging 10 points. Small world.
 

 

Garding the Guards

Baylor's three leading scorers are guards. All are All-Americans and among the best in college basketball in what they do and how they impact outcomes. Jared Butler (6-3, 195) is a first-team All-American and the Big 12's Player of the Year. He's averaging 17 points. MaCio Teague (6-4, 195) is a third-team All-American and has eight career games with six or more made 3-pointers, including 10 against Texas Tech. He's averaging 16.4 points. Davion Mitchell (6-2, 205) is a third-team All-America and the Big 12's Defensive Player of the Year. His nickname is "Off Night" because that's what opposing scorers usually have when Mitchell is checking them. He's averaging 14 points. Mitchell had 15, Butler had 12, Teague had 11 and yet another guard off the bench, Adam Flagler, had 18 in Baylor's 82-69 win over Illinois in December.

Gard's scouting report, "They can all score it from every level. They're all shooting it well from 3. They all handle it well … they're all interchangeable. That's the biggest thing. They just take turns. Mitchell runs most of the show but Butler and Teague step in …. Having that many guys that are that high level of players really challenges you …usually you can zero in on one, maybe two. But you have those three guys …" Pick your poison.

Added Trice on a potential showdown with the Baylor guards, "Yesterday's game (Friday) was all about the bigs and what the bigs were going to be able to do. And at the end of the day, it really came down to me and Brad (Davison) making a lot of shots. The big guys were rebounding well and boxing out and did the dirty work down low. But the headlines, so speak, were Brad knocking down shots and myself knocking down shots." That being said, Trice knows that the ball will be in the hands of the guards on Sunday, and he concluded, "I do think it's going to come down to the head-to-head matchup."

A Bears market (for forcing mistakes)

Gard pointed out that Baylor has changed its defensive philosophy since the last time these teams met in 2017 at the Hall of Fame Classic in Kansas City where the Bears defeated the Badgers 70-65 (Davison had 13, Aleem Ford had 10 and Trice had 3 points in the loss). Back then, the Bears were a heavy zone team. As they were at the 2014 NCAA tournament in Anaheim, Calif. where the Badgers had the upper hand defensively in a 69-52 victory, holding Baylor to just 16 points in the first half. The Bears now are a pressure defense. Unlike most Big Ten teams, they also try to force offensive actions to the baseline.

"They've got fast guards and mobile bigs," Trice said. "One through five, they can switch everything, and they pretty much do switch everything. But the coaches have made a point to focus on what we can do to limit those turnovers and continue to take care of the ball because that's what they thrive on. They thrive on those loose ball turnovers and getting out in transition. They get a lot of their points that way."

Whoever gets out of the gate the fastest will be one of the keys. Especially since Baylor rarely gives up the lead. The Bears are 49-4 when leading at halftime the last four seasons. Opined Drew, "Every game we go into we try to get off to a fast start. Unfortunately, the other team is trying to do the same. Usually, it comes down to if you're patient enough to get a good shot selection and then defensively if you can get some stops and you get some easys (transition baskets). Now, against Wisconsin, they don't give you many easys."

Easier said than done to stop a Baylor team that has led by at least 10 points in 22 of 25 games. Trice's bottom line, "We have to play 40 full minutes on both ends of the floor."