Thanks to the Seniors

Senior Day at the Kohl Center and the Badgers treated fans to an emotionally charged college basketball game – with a great finish when Kamm Taylor finally nailed a three-pointer and Spartan Drew Neitzel finally missing at the buzzer. The Badgers put on a brief pre-game ceremony for the 3 seniors, Taylor, Jason Chappell, and Alando Tucker, and a very nice, more extensive one afterwards with nearly every fan sticking around. In his video, Taylor jokingly thanked Devin Harris for leaving early so he could play!

I really don’t much care for Tom Izzo, his smug self-righteousness, and his team’s thuggish style of play. Fer instance, the flagrant foul by Neitzel on Flowers at the end of the first half that the refs missed. The game lasted over 2 hours in large part because of the roughly 8 million whistles. The refs, a bunch of ‘big name’ guys that you will a lot over the next few weeks, really inserted themselves into the game. Michigan State does dare the refs to call fouls by constantly pushing, grabbing, and moving screens, so in a way the whistles were OK, but it really broke up any flow. They even teed up Bo, one of the very few technicals he’s gotten since he arrived in 2001-2002. Later, Izzo did a Tasmanian Devil spin and got no T.

The fans arrived with ankles taped as Barry Alvarez says. And the students really brought their A-game (OK, I could do without some their ‘cheers’ that are both vulgar and boring). They did the modestly improvised ‘these refs suck’ chant – true enough. Then there was the ‘Britney Spears’ shout-out when Neitzel was shooting free throws (see pictures). The Kohl Center crowd is often pretty quiet and reactive, but we do get up for the big games and senior day against Sparty is a big one. One chant the students did not need to crack out today was ‘stand up old people’ – we were already standing!

Always a little bittersweet because it’s the last home game of the year and the last time we’ll see Alando soaring to snatch and slam an alley oop from Taylor. What lies ahead seems less certain now than ten days ago. Whatever you might think of the guy as a player – and I like him a little more than a lot of people – the loss of Brian Butch has thrown off the rotation. Maybe Bo has a better idea what he wants to do after today’s herky-jerky game, but it’s not to clear to me. They especially scuffled on offense without Butch’s inside-outside threat, modest as the 'inside' part may be.

Somebody besides Tucker needs to find their shooting stroke or it’s going to be a disappointing post-season. If they do get somebody hitting some outside shots, they can still go a long, long way. The Big Ten tournament gives them the chance to get squared away. But, hey, having followed this program since the 1979-80 season, I still have to pinch myself once in awhile, but Tucker said it well today that these guys have set the bar very high for anyone who ever plays - or coaches - at Wisconsin.