If you haven’t heard yet, Wisconsin has an older starting lineup than the Chicago Bulls. All jokes aside, the Badgers have the potential to get even older next season.
Due to new NCAA rules and the COVID-19 pandemic, all seniors have the option to return for an extra year in 2021-22. While the presumption is that the Badgers won’t get many, if any seniors back, head coach Greg Gard hasn’t exactly provided much insight yet.
Following UW’s 76-63 loss to top seed Baylor in the NCAA Tournament Round of 32, Gard was still mum about the situation.
“I don’t have any presumptions,” Gard said. “I don’t know.
“I’ll give them some time to marinate from this and let the emotional sting of all this, of the finality of a season dissipate a little bit, and then I’ll get a chance to talk to them. But right now, I don’t know, and I’m not going to guess.”
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UW has six seniors on its roster — guards Brad Davison, D’Mitrik Trice, Trevor Anderson, and forwards Aleem Ford, Micah Potter, and Nate Reuvers. The average age of their starting lineup was 22.6 years old.
The strategy of ‘get old, stay old’ is certainly not new to Gard or Wisconsin basketball in general. Often spacing out large recruiting classes, Gard and his predecessor, Bo Ryan, have relied on the development and comradery of upperclassmen to not only consistently compete atop the Big Ten Conference, but tutor the younger up and coming players.
“I think the older guys have done a really good job of putting the culture in the right spot and helping guys the younger guys — and that was the intention behind having a bigger younger group coming, be sitting kind of in the wings learning from these guys,” Gard explained.
Unless there are some surprise returns, the Badgers will have a very young lineup next season. If all six seniors bypass an extra year, UW’s two-most experienced players will be sophomore forward Tyler Wahl and freshman guard Johnny Davis.
“They know there’s going to be a lot of work,” said Gard. “The older guys didn’t get to this point by taking it easy.
“There’s going to be a lot of work they’re going to have to do in the off-season, starting with spring workouts and strength and conditioning, into the summer, and hopefully we can get back to some sense of normalcy in terms of off-season training, which I think was key for us that we didn’t have it last year or this past summer. And hopefully we can walk back into some sense of normalcy because the off-season is huge for everybody.
“It’s ginormous for our program. We have to have that off-season strength and conditioning component. Not only just summer but spring and into the fall in hopefully a normal pattern where we can really help these guys prepare for what’s coming.”
