Abbreviated Thoughts On Wisconsin vs. SIU-Edwardsville

It was late by the time I got to watch the Wisconsin game last evening, so I’m only offering an abbreviated set of points today. With so much basketball on TV, there was only so much time for writing afterward (particularly with a late-night Arizona-UAB game calling me). So here are today’s bare-bones thoughts:

1) Sure, they eventually won their game after their opponent hoisted an awful shot during its final possession, but it was nice to see Indiana struggling with IUPUI as the lead-in to the Wisconsin game.

2) As I get more familiar with Rob Wilson’s game, it occurs to me that right now that his biggest issue is that he plays at about one speed faster than he should be. The talent’s there, so I’m just waiting to see what he can do by midseason, when hopefully he’s calmed down a bit.

3) At one point last night the announcers were talking about the Badgers upcoming trip to the Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands, and noted that Marcus Landry had talked about enjoying some leisure time there after the team took care of business. They went on to note that Landry had indicated that he had taken eight years of swimming lessons and intended on putting those to use. Eight years? Who takes eight years of swimming lessons? Landry’s a fairly athletic guy, so I’d like to believe that something would have clicked for him during the first seven years, but maybe it took eight years for him to get a handle on that whole swimming thing. Either that, or Landry has a competitive swimming past that I don’t know about.

4) Perhaps it’s just because of Bo Ryan’s age, but I always find it awkwardly amusing when Ryan casually refers to Jason Bohannon by using his nickname “J-Bo,” as he did last night during his halftime interview.

5) I always thought he was a knucklehead when he was playing at Ohio State, but to my surprise, I found myself constantly impressed with the points that Jim Jackson made as color commentator last night. For the record, though, I do not include the painful “Jackson five” points to the game gimmick that was forced on viewers to be one of the things that I liked about Jackson. I’m willing to bet that he didn’t come up with that gimmick, though, so I’ll give him a pass on that.

6) It’s official–Ian Markolf got a minute and a half of action at the end of the game, so he’s not redshirting. Markolf’s time, combined with the lack of an appearance by Jared Berggren would seemingly imply that Berggren will redshirt this year. Factor in Ryan Evans’ announcement earlier in the week that he would be redshirting, and I’m officially 0-3 on predicting the status of these three for the year. You can’t win them all, I guess.

No better way to end the evening than with a blowout win by the Badgers, and getting to watch J.P. Gavinski run around for a good portion of the second half. I can’t make it down to the UWM game tonight, so I’m taking a break from things tonight. Hopefully I’ll be back on Friday with thoughts on whatever happens to be on TV on Thursday.