Rick Barnes addresses challenge of facing Wisconsin

Tennessee heads to Wisconsin for an early-season true road test, which head coach Rick Barnes broke down before the team begin their trip northward.

Wisconsin did fail to make the NCAA Tournament field for the first time since 2018 last year but is expected to rebound with a strong season after returning five of the six players who rotated as starters a year ago. With those five back, plus a transfer from Saint John’s with high expectations, Wisconsin is old and headed for a return to relevance under Greg Gard.

Rick Barnes isn’t overlooking this veteran squad.

“It is hard early in the year when you look at a team that has got 90% of its production coming back. They did well through the recruiting. Great fan base. Great arena to play in,” Barnes said. “Early in the year — and I was watching them before I came out to be with you guys — they’re probably closer to midseason form. Like us, you’d expect them to be a little bit ahead.”

Barnes also commented on Wisconsin’s pace of play: “and they did play with a faster pace the other night and, I think, one of the coaches told me that they said they wanted to play faster and they did do that.”

Tennessee and Wisconsin are always on the slower side in tempo, although the word slow doesn’t do justice to the snail’s-pace nature of Gard’s teams. Under his watch, Wisconsin has finished every season 315th or lower in Bart Torvik’s adjusted tempo metric… except one, in 2021-22, Gard’s most successful season.

With the comments from Barnes that Wisconsin wants to play faster and is, perhaps they’re going back to what worked in 2022 and with a more veteran team. Even beyond playing faster, Barnes also complimented this Badger team for the high-level offense they run.

“A really good team at passing the ball. A team that really runs good actions. They read well. They read defenses really well. If you try to push them one way, they do a great job of back-cutting. I think they make great penetrating passes and if you get spread out too much again, they do a really good job of back-cutting them and doing those type things to get those easy baskets,” Barnes said.

“They got a post guy they’ll play through and they’ve got guys that can drive it. They’re doing a lot of things. Early in the year, they’re gonna throw a lot of stuff at us and that we’re gonna have to be ready for.”

Wisconsin has solid veteran pieces at every position on the floor who know how to execute the offensive system. Tennessee is a typically strong team on defense, but per Barnes, they’ll need to be extra disciplined against a polished Wisconsin team that may try to push the pace.