Basketball Miscellany

Do you hate moving on? Maybe you'd like to retread the Badgers' loss to Indiana with the very linkable Big Ten Wonk.

The WSJ has a piece about Jason Bohannon that's worth a read.

While I was away, ESPN's Pat Forde wrote a nice piece about the state of UW basketball. (Thanks to Nicole for pointing it out.) I do take exception to the insinuation that Wisconsin suffers from a lack of basketball tradition. Anyone here familiar with the 1912 national champs? The one-loss team of 1915? The 1941 tournament champions? In the end, though, the selection committee will probably be too mired in the present to recognize the Badgers' greatness; they tend to prefer teams that have a history of performing well in the field of 64 and pay a little less attention to the field of 8 of six decades ago. Let's put it this way; if it looks like the Badgers and UNC are going to be vying for the last #1 seed, I would be shocked if UW wound up as anything besides a #2.

Can we please end the season today?

Finally, the loss to IU cost the Badgers their #2 ranking. They're now #4 in both polls, just behind #3 Ohio State. That ranking makes a lot of sense, because the Buckeyes have one more loss than the Badgers and lost the head-to-head matchup. Hopefully the Selection Committee does a little better than the coaches and the sportswriters when seeding time comes around.