Wisconsin basketball: news and notes from the past week

There isn’t too much news in the world of college basketball right now but here are a few scraps that might be of interest to y’all.

The Basketball Tournament

• Last year a group of Wisconsin Badgers alumni formed a team, Kohl Blooded, that played in The Basketball Tournament. This year they didn’t reenter the tournament but a number of former Badgers are still playing on various teams.

Team Big X, which “is about teaming up with guys from all over the Big Ten that spent their careers battling against each other” according to their assistant GM Jay Shunnar, has a trio of former Badgers on the squad and won their first game on Saturday against D2, 79-74.

Khalil Iverson had a game high 11 rebounds while also chipping in seven points and three steals, Trevon Hughes had nine points, three assists and three steals, while Vitto Brown added three boards himself.

Big X advances to face Red Scare, the Dayton University alumni squad, on July 8th at 1:00 P.M. CST on ESPN.

• Team Hines is a collection of some of the best American players who are playing overseas and Ethan Happ, who played in Italy this past season, was an obvious choice for the squad this year.

Despite Happ having a great game, scoring 20 points, pulling down six rebounds and adding two assists, two blocks and a steal, Team Hines fell 93-91 to Sideline Cancer. Happ even made four of his five free throws!

Film breakdown

• Jordan Sperber, a former college basketball assistant coach, started a site called Hoop Vision which is an excellent source of film breakdown and analytics discussions. He has a newsletter as well that is extremely informative. Last week he posted a pair of videos that break down how Wisconsin’s offense (cuts in the swing) and defense (covering screens) run.