‘They Beat Us Every Way Possible’: Wisconsin Coach Reflects on Lopsided Loss to Nebraska

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The No. 23 Nebraska men’s basketball team is now a perfect 10-0 on the year after an absolute drubbing of Big Ten Conference foe Wisconsin. The Huskers wiped the floor with the Badgers to the tune of 90-60 Wednesday night in Lincoln, and UW coach Greg Gard didn’t mince words when asked about it during his postgame press conference.

“They beat us every way possible,” Gard said. “There’s not another facet in the game of basketball that they couldn’t kick our rear end with. They did it all.”

And it starts on the defensive end for the Huskers. They held a Wisconsin team averaging 87.9 points per game to a season low of 60 points Wednesday night. Transversely, the Badgers couldn’t stop anything the Huskers were trying to do offensively.

Nebraska's Rienk Mast led Nebraska with 17 points in the 90-60 win over Wisconsin Wednesday night. | Dylan Widger-Imagn Images

Nebraska dominated inside, outscoring UW 44-24 in the paint. The Huskers showed the right touch from behind the arc once again, hitting 11-of-30 3-point attempts for a 36.67% mark from distance. That compares to the Badgers hitting just 7-of-32 attempts from long range – good for a 21.88%.

Nebraska’s 30-point win over Wisconsin is the largest in the series history between the two teams, beating NU’s previous record, which was a 21-point win over the Badgers back in 1991. Some easy, quick math will tell you that the active Husker roster was still a decade-plus away from being born when that happened.

“They’re playing well,” Gard said of the now 10-0 Huskers. “Fred’s doing a good job. When you’ve got Rienk Mast kind of anchoring that and quarterbacking, what they do offensively puts a lot of pressure on you. When you’re not connected defensively, when you’re guarding individually instead of collectively as a team, they feast on that. Any good offensive team does.”

The Huskers outscored Wisconsin 44-24 in the paint in Wednesday's lopsided win. | Dylan Widger-Imagn Images

That’s exactly what Nebraska did Wednesday night, as they not only outscored the Badgers by 20 points in the paint, but they were amazingly efficient from the field in the win, with a shooting percentage 54.10% on the night.

The blistering loss for the Badgers put things into perspective quickly for Gard.

“We don’t have a defensive identity – haven’t had one all year,” he said. “We’ll search to find one. I’ll find guys that want to play defense. We’ll find out in the next nine days. We haven’t had a defensive identity all year. Everybody gets all ‘rah rah’ about our offense, but it’s the other end of the floor that’s caused us trouble for the most part.”

Wisconsin actually held its own early on, leading Nebraska 21-19 near the halfway point of the first half. | Dylan Widger-Imagn Images

The trouble wasn’t immediate for the Badgers, though. In fact, Wisconsin kept pace with Nebraska for much of the first half and had a 21-19 lead in the game with 11 minutes left in the first half. The Badgers were holding their own and finding success against the usually scrappy Husker defense.

Then, UW did an about face and changed their approach.

“We just completely got away from what had been treating us well and what had been working in the first 5, 6, 7 minutes,” Gard said. “For whatever reason, we thought we were going to solve the puzzle a different way, and that didn’t work.”

After a tight start to the game, Nebraska ran away from Wisconsin to lead by 16 at the half en route to its 30-point win. — After a tight start to the game, Nebraska ran away from Wisconsin to lead by 16 at the half en route to its 30-point win over the Badgers. | Dylan Widger-Imagn Images

Instead of solving the puzzle, it became a puzzling decision for a Wisconsin team that was never able to put the pieces back together. After trailing by 16 at the half, the tune didn’t change in the second half with the Huskers padding the lead by another 14 en route to the 30-point win.

Another stat to not be lost Wednesday night is the fact that Nebraska is 1-0 in conference play. That’s the first time that’s happened for NU since the 2018-19 season – it’s been a minute.

Ultimately, Gard said he isn’t making excuses for how his team performed in Lincoln Wednesday night, but there will be a lot of film study over the next several days as he tries to simply deduce what happened in the blowout.

Defensively, Wisconsin lost its way after going stride-for-stride with Nebraska for the first ten minutes of the game. | Dylan Widger-Imagn Images

“We stopped moving the ball,” he reiterated. “I’ll go through the film and see exactly where and when – I’ve got a good idea. Our best possessions were possessions with the fewest amount of dribbles. Then, when we did get to the paint, we didn’t execute and finish like we could or plant and find the open shooter. We played into their hands. We did them a lot of favors from an offensive standpoint from how we executed early.”

After having just a few days to prepare for Wisconsin, NU will now have just a few more days to prepare for 13th-ranked Illinois in what will be Nebraska’s first true road game of the season. The Illini will be coming in with their own head of steam after beating Ohio State 88-80 Tuesday night.

Illinois also has two ranked wins to its name already this season, beating then-No. 11 Texas Tech 81-77 and knocking off No. 14 Tennessee 75-62. The only setbacks for the Illini this season have been to nationally ranked teams as they fell 74-61 to No. 5 UConn and 90-86 to then-No. 11 Alabama.

The Huskers will be looking to hand Illinois its third loss to a ranked team this season. The game will tip off at 3 p.m. CST and will be streamed via Peacock.

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