There was something special about this team. No matter what, they did win the Big 10 Championship, and held the #1 seed in the conference tournament. They were winners! We'll never know how far they could have gone in the NCAA tourney, but we can assume that they just might have made some waves, if you look at how they ended the last two months of this season.
But, beyond that, this was not considered a team that would do more than marginally make the tourney, if that. Nobody saw them winning 20 games, unless you were a homer. Nobody believed Gard could hold them together after they were beaten by two very weak teams to start the season. Yet, look what they did, with him at the helm.
When he left, I mentioned that maybe it was a good thing for both Kobe and the program. He wasn't harming it, but he just never really seemed to fit into the swing of things on the floor. He had more of a free lance style, and that wouldn't work in the Gard system.
I believe there was a method to the madness with Gard. I think he may have been wrong by relying too much on King and Trice early on. They are "not" his best players. This team is made up of a bunch of guys who can run some numbers, if the opposition fails to know how to play them. It happened week after week, and one or two players stepped up, and did some special things, and the wins just started accumulating.
I look back at when it started. When Davison was falling out of bounds with the ball after stealing it, and throwing it against the defender to give the Badgers possession. Then his ultimate desperation 3 from the corner on the next play, to win the game. It seemed, from my perspective, that Gard began to realize he had a lot of kids on this team who could be something special, when needed. It happened, game after game, from there on in. It also helped Trice to be a better point guard. He may not have registered a ton of assists, but he moved the ball better, and was able to get off passes to guys, who ended up making those assists because he worked them open. It's a team game, and he showed he could be the ultimate team player.
I was watching the 2015 Big 10 Championship game between Wisconsin and Michigan State on TV earlier today, and I marveled at the difference between that team and this team. The talent on that 2015 team was amazing. The team this year, not as much talent, but they have something special, and Greg Gard found out how to harness it, and turn them into winners.
At the beginning of the year, and during the early going, I thought Gard had lost it. His winning the Big 10 coach of the year award was deserved recognition for what he did. He did an amazing job.
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