Wisconsin basketball: guarded optimism?

For the past decade, basketball has been trending towards the play of guards. Everyone on the floor has to be able to shoot from three now whether or not you are 6-feet tall or 7-feet tall. College basketball, in particular, has been a guard dominated realm. Since 2010, the Most Outstanding Player in the Final Four has been a guard seven of the 10 times. Even when a big man won the award it was still a guy who could shoot: Duke’s Kyle Singler, Kentucky’s Anthony Davis and Louisville’s Luke Hancock.

The other names on the list include UConn’s Kemba Walker and Shabazz Napier, Villanova’s Donte DiVincenzo and Ryan Arcidiacono and Duke’s Tyus Jones. All NCAA Tournament legends and many went on to have excellent NBA careers.

This year, the B1G is a little different in that it is dominated by an impressive crop of big men. Kaleb Wesson, Jon Teske, Nate Reuvers, Daniel Oturu, Luka Garza and Kofi Cockburn are taking things back to the future as big men leading their teams in scoring (Cockburn is second on his team by 0.3, but the point stands).

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However, this doesn’t mean guard play is less important, in fact, I’d argue it makes guard play even MORE important. If every team has a good big man than the team that dominates on the perimeter and in the backcourt will be the best. Makes sense, right?

After the Badgers lost to Illinois on Wednesday night my text thread of all Badgers fans was lit up for the following 16-20 hours with takes on Brad Davison and D’Mitrik Trice. There were cries of “they’re not good enough for the B1G” to “well, they’re exactly who we thought they were” to “things will turn around...maybe.”

It was around hour 18 that I decided some more research needed to be done to see if Davison and Trice have been “good enough” for B1G guards this season. So I wandered on over to ol’ KenPom.com and picked out the top two guards for each B1G team and then looked at some cold, hard data.

(All stats as of 1/9/20)

(Any of the numbers that are in bold are KenPom national leaders.)

We have 28 different guards to look at here and I’ve chose some of their key offensive stats. Those are: percentage of minutes played, offensive rating, percentage of possession used, eFG%, assist rate, turnover rate, points per game, assists per game and turnovers per game. Out of the 28 players, these are the rankings for Trice and Davison in the conference.

Outside of the turnovers and minutes played categories...these aren’t exactly world beating numbers from the Badgers two veteran guards. Hell, these aren’t even Illinois beating numbers!

Now, I know what you’re thinking. What about the defensive side of the ball, Drew? Well, good question! I didn’t dive in the defensive numbers yet, but I’d like to so we can see if these two are at least pulling their weight there. Davison is often thought of as a “defensive stopper” but his defensive box plus/minus is 3.3 which doesn’t put him anywhere near the top-20 in the conference (No. 20 Geo Baker of Rutgers is at 4.6) and Trice is sitting at 3.0 so he’s also out of the conversation.

After poring over these stats for the past few days I’ve come to the conclusion that, as of right now, Davison and Trice aren’t good enough to help the Badgers make the NCAA Tournament. Trice is too inconsistent and Davison hasn’t been aggressive enough. Neither of them get to the free throw line as often as they should, which is a shame because they are both excellent free throw shooters, and they both often settle for long jumpers because they can’t get into the lane against quicker defenders.

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Both of them are capable of helping the Badgers win games, Davison is a great rebounder for his size/position and Trice is liable to go off for 20+ points if his three ball is dropping, but neither player is going to take Wisconsin to the next level or, sadly, keep them at their current level.