Wisconsin men’s basketball: Greg Gard unloads on Big Ten officials after loss to Iowa

The end of the Wisconsin Badgers/Iowa Hawkeyes game on Sunday was an embarrassment to any fan of good, free-flowing basketball. The officials called terrible fouls, went to video review multiple times and caused the last minute of the game to take over 20 minutes of real time to play. Sure Wisconsin is probably upset because they lost to Iowa, but even Iowa fans didn’t like the officiating and neutral observers also chimed in with their distaste over how the game was called.

In a, quite frankly, stunning turn of events, Wisconsin head coach absolutely went off on Big Ten officials in his post-game media availability, even going so far as to welcome a call from the Big Ten offices saying “they have my number.”

Gard spent much of his time railing against the “hook and hold” flagrant call that went against Brad Davison in the last minute of the game going so far as to say “those types of things happen on every single possession of the game. Brad Davison continues to get screwed by this.”

Even the players were fed up. True freshman Jonathan Davis is widely considered to be the most reserved and soft-spoken player on the team and he just comes out firing during his media availability.

Gard also bashed ESPN for the tasteless graphic they posted a few games ago basically joking about Davison being a dirty player. And look, we know that Davison has a history of being involved in plays that are questionable and he always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when stuff like this happens, but it isn’t ok for ESPN to be trumpeting these claims gleefully during a game.

Micah Potter said he was happy that Gard said what he said and by the looks of a lot of these comments, I could see this being a galvanizing moment for the Badgers heading into the postseason.

We will have the video of what Gard said up as soon as we get it from UW.