Mondays With Matt Presented By Middleton Ford - Monday March 25th

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
One to one point five, IbyYahn Madison's classic rock with the bad Boys
from being Down and the back toWork Monday. As we now welcome in
the Voice to the Wisconsin Badgers,Matt lape Mondays with Matt, presented by
Middleton Ford. Matt, how areyou, sir? Okay Ben? How's
it going? Everything's going good today. So let's rewind, if you will,
back to Friday night. Badgers fellon the opening round at the NC

(00:22):
to a tournament to James Madison isseventy two to sixty one and Matt.
Really a game where the Badgers neverreally got in sync. Whether it was
a number of misshots from the paints, nineteen turnovers, Badtresses really never got
into rhythm and played their game,did they No, they were they They
played very poorly, and there's noway of sugarcoating it. It was reminiscent

(00:44):
of a couple of February games,specifically won when they lost to a poor
Michigan team and then got trounced atRutgers, you know, and most of
the other losses when they were losingeight of eleven or either or games.
Even the Michigan game was but theywere they were sloppy, and on Friday
night they were very sloppy. Theyjust they could not handle the pressure,

(01:07):
the on ball pressure from from JamesMadison, and and that cost him.
You know, the first ten minutescost him. It was eighteen to five,
and after that it was a standoff. But they needed something better than
a standoff after that. Nineteen turnovers, you know, the points off turnovers.
That was as much of a statisticas anything in the game for Wisconsin.

(01:29):
I mean, really, had theyplayed an even better team, they
had lost by thirty. But asit was, James Madison was clearly the
better team on Friday, and itwas just part of how this tournament works.
You have a James Madison team thatplayed extremely well against the Wisconsin team
that had one of its, ifnot the worst performance of the year.
Yeah, James Madison scored twenty sevenpoints of those nineteen Wisconsin turnovers back on

(01:53):
Friday night. So as we closedthe book on the twenty twenty four or
twenty twenty three, twenty twenty five, we're season here for the Badgers.
Matt, what is your biggest takeawayfrom this season? Well, in a
very general sense, it was wildlyinconsistent, and they had obviously early in
the year they played extremely well.They got humbled in a game at Providence,

(02:16):
ran into a buzz saw against Arizona, which I still think is as
talented a team as there is remainingin the field, and a Yukon is
still the best team until proven otherwise. But for sheer talent, Arizona is
just top notch, at least fromwhat I saw in person. But you're
also seeing I'll try to keep thisshort, you're seeing a team that's trying

(02:38):
to evolve offensively. I mean,it scored seventy five points a game.
That's that's the most that scored inthirty years of Wisconsin basketball. They might
want to find a better way toget that out because I think the reputation
is it's still boring, it's stillplotting, and that really wasn't the case
now. They were hard to watchit on Friday. I get that.

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If you're just watching for the firsttime, you're thinking, oh boy,
here they are. But they're adjusting, they're adapting to what's going on in
college basketball where scoring is up,and Wisconsin scored ten points a game more
this year than last five more gamethan two years ago win I one a
piece of the Big Ten championship.But with that you're going to have bumps,

(03:21):
and this program went through that.Defensively, there was slippage, not
up to its normal standard. ButI think overall now that the next step
is to get it out there thatthe old system of Wisconsin basketball is no
longer and that can maybe help themin the recruiting process. They have a
couple of really good kids coming in, but we live in the portal age

(03:45):
Ben Connor seasons already in in theportal, and we'll see what the rest
of this roster looks like in thecoming weeks. Yeah, and I was
going to kind of ask you aboutwhat this team could look like next year.
Obviously tell a wall. He graduatesconter reseision as you me, and
he entered the transfer portal and jstoher reading some things about how he's got
NBA dreams aspirations as most do.Hopefully he is back on this team next

(04:09):
year as well. But yeah,I mean, do you think this team
could be more offensive, you know, focused team versus on defense as we've
seen from this Batzer program over theyears. Is that what we possibly could
see next year? I know it'sa long way ahead. Well that's what
we saw this year, r Imean, quite frankly, I mean they
were one of that. They werea top twenty team in offensive efficiency,

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where defensively they were outside of thetop forty, which is pretty unusual for
Wisconsin. Yeah. I could throwa lot of metrics at you, but
the short answer to your question isprobably so because when you when you see
these teams in the tournament right now, most of them are upper echelon in
offensive efficiency. There are a coupleof outliers. You know, Iowa State

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is not a great offensive team,but it's a really hard team to beat.
But offense has kind of taken overlike it has in a lot of
other sports, you know, atthe NBA, the NFL, that's what
people want. There have been rulestweaks that may get harder to draw charge,
you know, those that type ofthing. So yeah, I think

(05:11):
you have been great artists talked aboutit. You have to score. You've
got to be able to find waysto up your points per game, which
they did this year, and Ithink it's something they're going to continue continue
to work on. Seventy five agame this year. I'm sure they'd like
to get a close to eighty,if not better next year, but a
lot of that is construction. We'llsee what we'll see what the talent looks

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like. You know, back inthe day you say, well again,
you know there are other key guysback save Tyler Wall. Well, not
necessarily now with the transfer portal beingsuch a big part of college sports.
Talk with the Voice of the Badgers, Matt Leapaye Mondays with Matt, presented
by Middleton Ford here on ib AFEN. So, as we look at the
nc to A tournament as a whole, Matt surprises for you. I think

(05:54):
it was cool to see the Pewaukeenative Jack goal Key, I believe say
you pronounce that? Yeah, withall those threes against Kentucky's Oakland took down
the Wildcats. Yeah, that wasThat's fine. That's the beauty of the
tournament when you can see somebody likethat that not many people outside of Wisconsin
or specifically Pewaukee knew much of anythingabout Jack, but he was a D

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two player, and then you know, being a part of the Oakland program,
that was really that was fun towatch. Greg Campy has been coaching
there forever and to see that teamwin a game and give North Carolina State
all had wanted as well. Thatwas you know, that was a lot
of fun. But you it's prettymuch shock here in this tournament outside of

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NC State, but they've been asa surprise. They would have to be
the biggest surprise of any team stillin this They were nine and eleven in
the ACC. They lost their lastfour regular season games in seven out of
nine, so you know, forthe you need momentum going into the postseason
crowd. There's another example of wellnot always. They're trying to be yukon

(07:00):
twenty eleven. So although they gothot, they won their conference tournament which
allowed them to get into this tournament. And now that's the next opponent for
Marquette. You know, a teamthat got past Colorado. It was a
great game yesterday. Tyler Kohlik looklooks good back from the oblique, the
oblique injury that shut him down forseveral games. But it sets up a

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pretty daunting Sweet sixteen. I thinkin the South Regional you got Houston and
Duke and then Marquette and trying toput an end to this little I don't
know if you can call NC Stateof Cinderella story because it plays in the
acc but it's probably the closest thingwe have to one in this tournament right
now. And one thing too thatI wanted to ask you for the past
I don't know, two weeks orso, there was a lot of chatter

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before the tournament got going about expansionand adding more teams to the tournament.
I personally believe if you watch thistournament this year, it's got all the
excitement it needs. I don't thinkwe need to water this down, do
you with more teams? No,but this is a flex from a couple
of power conferences. You just wantmore of your teams in it, you
know, I think that that's whatwe're looking at here. No, I

(08:07):
mean, to me, sixty eightis plenty. It still makes it hard
to get in. It's still alow percentage of teams in Division one who
get into this. So yeah,I mean, is it going to expand?
It probably will. I mean itjust it's inevitable that it will to
what that number is, I don'tknow, but you know, for me,

(08:28):
sixty eight, sixty eight is fine. And look this year it's probably
working out the way most would wantis that you get you know, even
if it's a James Madison winning thegame against Wisconsin, you get Oakland winning
game, Yale getting through and intothe round of thirty two. But then
it starts to settle down, andyou still got Yukon. You have Houston,

(08:50):
you have Purdue, you have NorthCarolina, Arizona, so on,
and so forth. A lot ofthe usual teams, power team teams that
will draw a lot of eyeballs tothe television broadcast of these games. So
it's as opposed to last year.You had great stories but fau San Diego
State, which was great, youknow for a basketball junkie, but it

(09:13):
was also one of the lowest ratedtournaments final fours. Ever, this one
might shape up to be quite abit better. The numbers were really good
this past weekend, so people weretuning in. Yeah, I was laughing
there when you said Yale, becauseI'm assuming you saw the coverage and CBS
a little bit at least maybe highlightsof Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley and Kenny
just remaant in with the way hepronounced Yale. Oh yeah, oh yeah,

(09:35):
yeah. They have fun. Yeah, they're got jumping back into the
college world. But they have alot of fun doing it. Yes they
do so all right. That isin our final Mondays with Matt for a
while here on i b AFN.Matt, thank you for your time every
week as always, and we'll lookforward to connecting again in August as we
look forward to Wisconsin football. Soundsgood bad, Take care, have a
good one. Thank you again.If you missed any part of our conversation,

(09:58):
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