A Bielema Dig?

I believe Bret Bielema, head coach of the University of Wisconsin football team took a dig at his critics today. Not to a reporter, but on the field of play.

Last week Wisconsin rolled Indiana by a score of 83-20, and many national media pundits were up in arms about that score. Many complained that Wisconsin still passed the ball in the fourth quarter, with a huge lead. They didn't mention it was 3rd and 4th string players still scoring on Indiana, only that Wisconsin kept scoring. Evidently the players were supposed to take a knee after any gain of more than 2 yards to give Indiana the ball back.

This week Bielema took a shot at them by calling 29 straight running plays in the second half against Michigan (31 if the victory formation is counted). They still scored four more times, with only 1 pass in the half. The message was pretty simple, run, pass, whatever, the defense has to stop us, and they haven't been able to lately.

Bielema would have been justified throwing this week, Michigan was making a run and got to within 2 scores a couple of times. They continually stacked the box with nine men. They still ran, and still scored.

LSU, Stanford, TCU and Boise State will all be looking at the films from the last two games; those are the most likely opponents for Wisconsin come bowl time. My guess would be each will hope one of the others gets to play the Badgers.

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Something Good About Athletes

After spending most of the winter listening to congressional hearings about HGH and other steroids it's easy to get very jaded about athletes.

Today's Washington Post has an excellent piece that helps remind us that not all athletes are jerks, and that they can be humbled by the realization they are role models for many kids.

Michael Flowers is a guard from Wisconsin who's made his name in college ball not by scoring 25 a game, but keeping the other teams best player from doing that. He was robbed (IMHO) by not being the defensive player of the year in the Big 10.

Flowers took 2 weeks off this year to deal with "personal problems" which he, and his family don't discuss. But he credits a 5 five year old, half way across the country with putting things into perspective for him.

He keeps a number 22 jersey (his number) that says "Kidball" on it that he got from Max Bass of Maryland with him all the time. It reminds him that things can be tough for some folks, but not nearly as tough as they are for a 5 year old with leukemia.

Check out the article, if you are tired of Bonds, Cansenco, Clemens, and the other jerks of sport, this might give you back some faith in athletes.

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The Beauty of Ugly

I'm not much of an NBA fan, I like basketball, not the glorified street hoops it's become. The NCAA tourney, on the other hand, I like. You get to see a ton of teams who never get TV time otherwise, If it's like Friday, where the four lower seeds in Tampa won, you get to see some great upsets.

The big thing, though is you get to see basketball played by a lot more teams on the court than in the NBA. The Wisconsin Badgers are one of the ultimate teams in what many people like to think of as an individual sport anymore with four other guys around the indivdual.

OJ Mayo and Michael Beasley, two great freshmen players are gone from the tourney, OJ because Beasley had help at Kansas State to beat USC. Beasley because he didn't have enough help to beat Wisconsin. They were the talk of the tourney, how far could they take their teams. The answer, not far enough, because they really don't have teams. They have a guy (two in KSU's case) and some roll players out there to fill the roster.

Wisconsin is never a glamour pick in the NCAA Tournament, usually they are the team picked to leave kind of early. But they are in their 2nd sweet sixteen in the last 4 years. Kevin Blackistone on ESPN's "Around the Horn" picked them to lose in the first round to Cal State Fullerton, because they hadn't played such a high scoring team all year, and wouldn't know how to defend them. They held Fullerton to 56 points (26 below average); Blackistone had it backwards, Fullerton didn't know how to play against a team defense, something few teams see a lot of anymore.

Against Kansas State pundits picked Wisconsin to lose because of KSU's one two punch of Micheal Beasley and Bill Walker, probably both going to the NBA in the next draft. Wisconsin has no one following that route according to conventional wisdom; and won again with a defense that frustrated, and an offense that may have frustrated more. They don't take many bad shots, and eat clock like it's candy on Easter Sunday.

KSU players after the game admitted that once they were down they sometimes felt desparate, because Wisconsin didn't give a lot of extra shots. Zero fast break points is a telling stat, so is 0-13 from beyond the arc. That's a lot of 3 point shots to take, and when they don't fall it generally means the other team gets the ball, and more of that clock candy to eat.

Bo Ryan, Wisconsin's coach was asked about how they decided to defend Beasley and answered "Same defense, same everything. If we changed what we did against him, we'd probably lose by 20. We do the same thing we've done every year against every team." The 31-4 record this year, when they were picked to finish 5th in the Big 10, shows that the system is important.


One of the questioners at the KSU post game press conference seemed to get that when he asked Coach Frank Martin what Wisconsin did to them, since they seem to do it to everyone.

That's the beauty of Bo Ryan's "ugly" system. It doesn't matter who you play, you play your game, not theirs. Very few teams have taken them out of that system since Ryan arrived, because he make his players believe in the system, not their own stats in the box score.

The system is not glamour ball, it's ugly sometimes, slow most times, and basketball the way it was meant to be played, with five guys working as one. I love it.

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