Greg Gard analyzes Wisconsin's shot selection in Nebraska loss
Greg Gard wasn’t very enthusiastic following his Wisconsin team falling to the Nebraska Cornhuskers on Friday night.
The Badgers watched their lead evaporate over the second half, and then fell in overtime to their Big Ten foe. Speaking with the media afterwards, Gard decided to focus on his team’s shot selection throughout the game, believing it has to improve if Wisconsin is to make a run over the next couple of months.
“I think you always, even in the first half, I felt we took some shots, and we talked about shot-quality needing to be better,” Gard said. “We had a couple runs. Chucky [Hepburn] got those steals there, that got us a little separation to finish out the half.
“But shot selection still was, it’s okay when it’s one or two, but when it continues to be questionable decision after questionable decision, we’ve got to catch ourselves, and say we can’t continue to rely on that type of offensive approach.”
Nebraska isn’t exactly a pushover on the hardwood, but that won’t make the Badgers feel any better about their loss. We’ll see if Greg Gard can get his team back on track on Sunday against the Purdue Boilermakers.
Greg Gard on Nebraska loss: ‘I thought we got completely away from what makes us good’
Moreover, Greg Gard was not happy with his team’s 80-72 overtime loss in Lincoln on Thursday. He felt like his team did several things during the game, especially late, that didn’t represent who they are or what they’d been doing to win games so far this season.
“I thought we got completely away from what makes us good,” said Gard. “The shots that we settled for at times? Then, obviously, turning the ball over? Gambling defensively when we didn’t need to gamble? Just doing some very uncharacteristic things.”
In the win for the Cornhuskers, Nebraska completed the largest comeback since they became a member of the Big Ten back in 2011. It was an improbable outcome that led to yet another court storming for their fanbase after a second victory over a Top-10 team this season.
Many things lead to the kind of collapse like the one that Wisconsin had inside Pinnacle Bank Arena. The way all of those uncommon aspects compounded, though, is what did them in. That will likely be what haunts Gard the most as he must now prepare his team to respond in a matchup between them and Purdue as the best of the conference this weekend.
On3’s Sam Gillenwater contributed to this article.