Reactions To Badgers' Season Opener - GUEST POST

Scott S. on UW's 68-61 victory over Long Beach State yesterday:

Well, the weird thing about the Badgers is that they didn't play that bad. There is just one HUGE weakness: Height. They're just too damn small. I've been ranting about this for months and no one will listen. Here's my rant:

Greg Stiemsma should have red-shirted his freshman year. It was the stupidest move ever not to. He played in 10 games, not one meaningful minute, and scored about 6 meaningless points. I'm not saying Stiemsma is the end all, be all by any stretch of the imagination, but he brought a defensive presence and offensive rebounding ability that this team DEARLY lacks.

Ok, so back to the Long Beach State game. Nankivil is too small to play center, and not a good enough athlete to play anywhere else. Leuer is too weak to play center. Gullickson is too short. Their best lineup is the starting five, minus Nankivil and adding Taylor. They're small and quick.

Unfortunately, its kind of like Marquette. When Marcus Landry (who is the only player who played his ass off) is your center at 6'7", you're going to get KILLED on the glass. I love Krabby, but he can't jump, and thus at 6'6" is too small to play power forward.

Overall impressions of the team? Bohannon is going to be the 2nd best scoring option. Bo isn't happy with Hughes, and essentially gave Taylor just as many minutes. Taylor is a better defensive player than Hughes, and probably by the end of the season will be just as good offensively - really like Taylor. Nankivil was poor with the ball, committing too many turnovers.

The real problem is, when you have guys like Krabby, Jarmusz, Nankivil, Rob Wilson (who someday could be a Flowers-esque defensive stopper) on the floor, you don't really have a lot of scoring options. None of those four scare you, so teams focus on Landry and Bohannon. The absolute X-factor is Hughes, and he played poorly.

I know I've said it a lot, but I want to see what Jared Berggren can do. He's 6'10" and athletic. I don't see how he can be dramatically worse than 6'8" Nankivil. One of the staples of Bo's Platteville teams was that they went 10-deep and applied a hellish full court press throughout the game. Well, these Badgers are 9 deep, and guys like Hughes, Taylor, and Wilson excel at pressing the ball full court. I'm not proposing using it exclusively, but an occasional 3 or 4 minutes pressing action might generate some easy buckets. Defensively, minus the lack of a true center, we're fine. I just don't think we can score enough to compete for a Big Ten title.