Wisconsin Basketball: Is NCAA Tournament success overrated?
The headline is sure to cause angst among Wisconsin Badgers fans. But hear me out.
Wisconsin basketball’s 2023-24 season came to a crashing end with a 72-61 NCAA Tournament first-round loss to No. 12-seed James Madison. The loss ensured the program’s Sweet Sixteen drought would extend to seven years, and cast a dark cloud on an otherwise successful season.
Did the year have ups and big downs, and end in disappointment? Absolutely. But the program missed the NCAA Tournament entirely in 2022-23, made clear improvements in 2023-24 including the addition of St. John’s transfer guard A.J. Storr and now looks poised for a big 2024-25.
Related: If Wisconsin decides to move on from Greg Gard, who could it target as its next head coach?
This is not making excuses for an inexplicable no-show loss against James Madison, but it’s pointing out the fact that the program is not falling apart — contrary to some of the public sentiment.
That brings us to the general question: is NCAA Tournament success overrated when evaluating the health of a program? I’d argue it is.
The argument isn’t that NCAA Tournament success doesn’t matter, it clearly does. But more so is it overrated in the minds of college basketball fans.
For something to be overrated that means the public must put a disproportionate amount of importance on it. I think that’s the case here, as the sentence ‘Wisconsin hasn’t made the Sweet Sixteen since 2016-17‘ is uttered in every anti-Greg Gard discussion.
First, that sentence completely misses the context surrounding the drought.
The "fact" that the Badgers have not made the S16 in 7 years is such a BS copout. 1. Making the S16 is fricking hard. 2. Tourney was cancelled in a year the Badgers projected to a high seed. 3. They lost Hepburn one year.
— Badgermaniac (@THEbadgermaniac) March 25, 2024
Wisconsin’s best shot at a deep run was 2020, when the tournament was canceled. The program’s next-best look was 2022 when Johnny Davis and Chucky Hepburn suffered injuries at the worst possible time. Then it played the future national champion in Baylor in 2021, lost to an over-seeded Oregon team in 2019 and was somewhat screwed out of an NCAA Tournament birth in 2022-23 after playing one of the nation’s toughest schedules.
These are not all excuses, it’s just outlining the facts of the last seven years of disappointment. It’s also not letting Greg Gard off the hook — he’ll enter 2024-25 firmly on the hot seat and needing to take a big jump forward.
Related: Evaluating the reasons for and against Wisconsin basketball firing head coach Greg Gard
But returning to the general statement: of course NCAA Tournament success is overrated. Badgers fans want to make seismic changes because the team hasn’t advanced far in a single-elimination, high-variance, mostly-random postseason structure.
Plus, Bo Ryan’s incredible run in 2014 and 2015 made it seem like Final Four trips are easily executed and should be expected every season. I’d say that’s a few bars too high for any program, let alone Wisconsin’s.
Here’s the central question: what is a bigger indicator of future success, regular-season wins or NCAA Tournament wins? Both definitely matter, but I’d argue regular-season success matters far more for the long-term outlook.
Wisconsin has won at least 20 games in five of the last six seasons, have two Big Ten regular season titles to show for it and, when looking at the big picture, have been one of the 15-20 best programs in the country over that span.
Compare that to Florida Atlantic, whose former head coach Dusty May just took the job at Michigan. The Owls made a miraculous Final Four run in 2023, but went from 2003-2022 without making the tournament once.
Wisconsin has a better long-term outlook than a program like Florida Atlantic, even if FAU ‘at least can win in the postseason.’
Again, postseason success matters. It’s the driving force of the sport. But the public overrates winning NCAA Tournament games when evaluating the future of a program — seen clearly with the collective need to fire Gard.
The Gard debate will continue on, and should. But saying ‘Wisconsin should expect Final Four trips’ is not a sustainable way to run a college basketball program.
Postseason success must be taken into account along with all the other indicators of program health — recruiting, regular-season success, etc. It isn’t the end-all, be-all when evaluating a coach’s future.
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