Tourney Hot Takes, Vol. 1: Wisconsin Has No Business in NCAA Tournament

Wisconsin is 17-14 and has only one win against a ranked team all year. They lost Wednesday night as a No. 12 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, even though some bracketologists had them in the NCAA field. I say there's zero chance in my first ''Tourney Hot Take''

CHICAGO — Wisconsin has never had to play on Wednesday in the Big Ten Tournament. They did this week, though, by future of being the No. 12 seed in a 14-team.

They were a bubble team heading into their game with No. 13-seed Ohio State, the team that beat then out for the ''Massive Underachievers Award'' this season. So Wednesday's game, certainly, was a must-win.

But Wisconsin was down by 27 before you know and looked like they didn't about that NCAA Tournament bid.

If they don't care, they why should we? The Badgers made a nice second-half rally, but that huge deficit was too much to overcome in a 65-57 loss. Wisconsin is 17-14 and has beaten one ranked team all year. That was Maryland back in December, and they've been unranked most of the year afterward.

A few people had Wisconsin still in their brackets before Wednesday. Not me. In fact, I felt like they needed to win two games in the Big Ten Tournament to get in. 

Now that they've lost? Bye-bye.

They've been in 22 of the past 23 NCAAs. Not this year.

"It hurts because we knew what we were getting ourselves into,'' Wisconsin forward Tyler Wahl said. "We know the position we put ourselves into, and we had to come out here and win the game. 

"We definitely did not start with the urgency that we needed to. I do like the way that we fought back, but at the end of the day, we've just got to be better.''

Wisconsin coach Greg Gard is still optimistic, but he can also see the writing on the wall. too.

"There's been a lot of lessons that haven't been pleasant to go through that these guys have experienced that that's what I talked about afterwards, that we have to be able to use these to our advantage no matter what happens the rest of this year and spinning forward,'' Gard said. "We're more focused on this year right now. We obviously have maturing to do in some of these areas, and we've seen that. 

"I think that's the one thing with younger teams is the inconsistency, and we sometimes we change colors right within a game. Today's a good example of being put on our heels in the first half and then getting back to who we need to be and who we need to be to be good in the second half. So that's always a challenge with a younger group to have them understand that and always approach it that way, and it usually comes more natural and more consistent with older guys. So that's something we've got to continue -- I've got to help them with it, and leadership has to grow organically within. There's a lot of hurtful lessons this year that we've had to go through that have stung that we have to bottle and use to our advantage.''

What do you think? Is Wisconsin an NCAA Tournament team? We are taking a Twitter poll.

Does Wisconsin have a chance to get an NCAA Tournament bid?

— Tom Brew (@tombrewsports) March 9, 2023