It's almost time

As I sit at home watching the Badgers take on UW-Eau Claire, it is shocking to realize that the mens hoops season is all of 4 days away when the Mastadons of IU-FW rise from the ashes to take on the Badgers.

I spent a good deal of my lunch hour reading some of the preseason articles. A lot of people seem to be down on the Badgers, and for some good reasons- the bad taste left in everyone's mouth after the events of 3/18, the questions surrounding Michael Flowers, the improvements of IU and MSU, and the graduations of Kam Taylor and Alando Tucker are pretty much the most prominent reasons to be down on the Badgers.

However, it would be short-sighted to just dwell on those reasons heading into the season.

First of all, what happened on March 18 was nothing more and nothing less than a team who lost a key cog in its wheel and was playing bad basketball at a bad time to play bad basketball. Had the NCAA tournament been held 3-4 weeks earlier not only would Wisconsin had been a #1 seed, but they might have won it all.

While I am also concerned with the LOA of Flowers, he is back on the team and will have plenty of time to get back into the swing of things in the next two weeks before the Badgers play anything resembling a difficult game.

And while MSU and IU should be better than the Badgers, the Badgers and us fans can only worry about our team.

So that brings us to the 3 graduations. First off, losing Chappell is probably a net positive. The guy was absolute rubbish for most of last year. I feel better with Greg Steimsma, anyways.
Taylor and Tucker hurt, no doubt. You just cannot lose an excellent ball handler/scorer and also arguably the greatest player in program history and just move on without difficulties, but programs have to move on. Personally, I have a world of confidence in Marcus Landry, J-Boh, Hughes, and one of our bigger freshman to step up and pick up the points, minues and leadership that graduated last May.
And that goes without mentioning the guy who I think will be one of the 3 best players in the conference by year's end- Brian Butch. Oh sure, Butch needs to step up and be tougher/score more/dominate/not disappear/DUNK. But why can't he? In 3 years he has certainly showed us all of those characteristics, and after the way his season ended last year he has all the motivation in the world to shut jackasses like Doug Gottlieb up.

So how 'bout it all of you out in Badgerland, what can we expect of our heroes this season?

My Big 10 preview and game by game look ahead is coming this weekend.