MADISON, Wis. — With the first week of practice nearly complete, the 2016-2017 Wisconsin Badgers Men’s Basketball season is officially underway. Big Ten Freshman of the Year Ethan Happ will be a major piece of the puzzle this year, and in a word, the team feels confident heading into the season.
“We felt like we could have gone farther last year, and this year [we have] the same exact team back, except losing Jordan Smith,” Happ told Sconnie Sports Talk. “Then adding two scholarship freshmen that are really talented, plus having Brevin [Pritzl] and Andy [Van Vliet] finally being able to play…it’s a really loaded team.”
Happ, a 6-10 redshirt sophomore from Milan, Illinois, has come a long way in a short amount of time. In just one year, he went from practicing against National Player of the Year Frank Kaminsky to playing like him on the court and helping lead the Badgers to the Sweet Sixteen.
In describing this transition, Happ said that “the biggest difference is probably that it didn’t matter how you played in practice. I mean, you could have an off-day, miss a bunch of shots, have defensive lapses, and it really wouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Then getting thrown into the starting lineup your first year, everything is more magnified with everyone watching you.”
Despite losing essentially no major players, Happ stated that he and the team are taking a modified approach in preparing for this season. “I want to maintain what I did last year, not take a step back obviously,” said Happ. “But last year I also had some peaks and valleys, and this year I want to be more stable throughout the season.”
Stability will come with adding more parts to his game – something Happ has been emphasizing. “I’ve been working on the perimeter shot as well…but ‘3than’ will have to be the finished product,” Happ said jokingly – the term “3than” came from teammate and roommate of three years Vitto Brown, who used it at the NCAA Tournament in St. Louis talking about Happ’s progression of outside shooting, which Brown himself has seemingly mastered.
Beyond being the glue to the Badgers down low, Happ said the team is focusing on tightening their game as well. “We want to build our base on defense, so that’s definitely been a point of emphasis. We’ve done a lot of close-out drills, a lot of box-out drills, and that’s something we’ve been focusing on so far,” he said, discussing areas the team emphasized this summer.
In his two full years at UW, Happ and the Badgers have also endured one of the most abrupt and unexpected coaching changes in recent memory, as Coach Bo Ryan stepped down in the middle of last season. In his departure, longtime assistant Greg Gard took over, moving a team that was 7-5 with home losses to Western Illinois and UW-Milwaukee, to a team that finished by going 22-13, upsetting 2-seed Xavier in the round of 32 and losing a close game to Notre Dame in the Sweet 16.
A lot of changes, necessarily, evolved out of the way that Coach Gard’s coaching style has been different from that of Coach Ryan’s. “There are a lot of similar character traits, but I think Coach Gard puts in a lot of time going through practice clips. We’ll watch the clips so he’ll take more time to explain it, whether it’s a drill or something you did wrong, where Coach Ryan would just kind of expect you to know what to do,” Happ told SST. “Not to say Coach Ryan wasn’t detail-oriented, but Coach Gard takes time to make sure everyone is on the same page.”
With Gard’s commitment to nuance and detail, the team has shown a lot of progression since their lowly 7-5 start in 2015-16. Starting off last season, it was basically just Nigel Hayes, Bronson Koenig, and Zak Showalter who played significant minutes the previous season.
“Vitto played sparingly just because he was behind Frank, and then it was like a bunch of freshmen, including myself,” Happ explained. “Experience is one of the best tools, and you could tell as we got more experience and more momentum, we started to play better and better each night, and I think now that we are returning basically our whole team with that much more experience, I think that’s going to give us more confidence going into the season to start it off.”
Another major change from last season is the feel going into the season. Whereas last season’s team was not expected to compete for a championship, this year’s team shows more promise. However, Happ explained that this doesn’t shake the Badgers. “We have our own focus, and we’re not worried about anything outside of our locker room,” he said. “Our coaches have done a good job reiterating that, but it has to come from within our locker room. I don’t think it’s going to be an issue, and we’re just going to stay focused throughout the whole season.”
But going into the season, the Badgers are focused on something they’ve always been known for: fundamentals. “This might sound silly,” said Happ, “but I feel the need to earn my spot again, so that’s what I’m personally looking forward to.”
Wisconsin basketball season officially begins on October 23rd, when the annual Red vs. White Scrimmage will take place in the Kohl Center. Tipoff is at 1 p.m. CT.