Greg Gard credits Jacksonville State's effort against Wisconsin

Jacksonville State is no blue chip program, but it made Wisconsin work. After the Badgers’ 75-60 win over Jacksonville State on Thursday, Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard gave credit to the Gamecocks’ stingy defense.

“Jacksonville? I don’t think we give enough credit for how they tried to play us with really jamming things up, gapping up, sending the double-team, in the second half specifically, at our bigs,” Gard said. “Coach Harper has been doing it for a long time. Just watching film? We were going to have to really work to get things offensively because they’re a good defensive team.”

Wisconsin’s work eventually paid off. The Badgers had three players score double figures. The team was led by Steven Crowl, who exploded for 19 points and nine rebounds in just 26 minutes. Wisconsin was particularly dominant down low.

The Badgers scored 40 points in the paint compared to Jacksonville State’s 20. Additionally, Wisconsin tallied more second-chance points and rebounds. It wasn’t always pretty, but Gard was overall happy with his team’s performance.

“As choppy as it looked? We still ended up at 1.17 [points per possession] and they were at 0.92. So that actually puts us right at our average with where we’ve been on the year at 1.17,” Gard said. “I don’t know it doesn’t always, maybe, appear to be aesthetically pleasing.

“When you get in those type of games, they want to slow it down and go possession by possession? You have to be disciplined enough to not alter from what your plan is of really trying to play through the paint.”

A bounce-back win for Wisconsin

The win was a much-needed bounce-back victory for the Badgers. Wisconsin suffered a 98-73 loss to Arizona in its last game. Arizona’s 98 points are the most a program has scored in a single game against Wisconsin since 1994. After the loss, Gard attempted to describe what happened.

“The snowball happened, it kept getting bigger and bigger, and it was hard for us to get it under control,” Gard said. “We’ll learn a lot from this as we go through the tape. I didn’t think we were as good defensively as we have been, but that’s in large part due to Arizona.”

With a win on their side, the Badgers will look to build on their positive momentum. On Dec. 22, Wisconsin will face off against Chicago State at 8 p.m. ET on the Big Ten Network.