B
44
y opening the season with back-to-back
against St. John's and Florida, there was a
small margin of error but a big opportunity
to grow for the Wisconsin men's basketball team.
"I think it matures us very quickly and shows us
what we can and what we can't do," said sophomore
forward Sam Dekker. "Don't get me wrong, you learn
from playing some lesser teams.
"But you get it on a grander scale here: your weaknesses show more and your strengths show more.
We're going to take a lot out of these two games;
we're going to learn a lot from them."
It may not be what you always want out of an
early-season schedule. But associate head coach
Greg Gard liked the upside of facing the Red Storm
in South Dakota and the Gators in the Kohl Center.
"Normally we have two or three warm-up games
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VARSITY November 14, 2013
before we play this type of competition," said Gard,
who's responsible for putting together the schedule.
"But this really shows us where we're at."
Last Friday night, the Badgers put five players in
double-figures and knocked off St. John's, 86-75, at
the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, S.D. Josh Gasser
led the scoring with 19 points.
Tuesday night, they took on a highly-ranked Florida team that beat them, 74-56, in Gainesville last
season.
"They kind of took us to the woodshed for the
greater part of that game," Gard recalled painfully.
"I think we're at a different point now than we were
then. I think our guards have matured.
"This will be a positive building block for us. We'll
take the good things we do from it and we'll pull out
some of the things that we have to work on.
