BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer
MADISON, Wis. — "We're better than them."
There was Nigel Hayes in the locker room at halftime after Wisconsin had taken a 31-27 lead over Villanova, the NCAA tournament's No. 1 seed and defending national champion. There was Bronson Koenig talking about how the Wildcats were defending him. There was Ethan Happ motioning to a dry erase board and talking to Koenig about how they could better utilize some actions. And there was Hayes writing on the board Take care of ball & rebound and circling it for emphasis.
All of this was happening before UW head coach Greg Gard re-joined his players in the locker room and saw what Hayes had written on the board.
"Coach Gard walked in," Happ related, "and he said, 'You've read my mind.'"
Of Villanova's 27 points, 12 were off turnovers and 10 off second-chance opportunities.
Take care of ball & rebound.
It put a smile on Gard's face.
"You know your message is getting through," Gard said.
You also know the Wisconsin players are doing a better job of communicating what needs to be done and how it needs to be approached and implemented. In addition, they're communicating better with each other, much better than they did at many junctures during the regular season. Communication was at the core of the 2014 and 2015 Final Four teams. Communication and skill.
"For this team to succeed, they need to do that — they need to communicate," said UW associate head coach Lamont Paris. "They need to encourage each other. They need to be critical of each other at times. Communication is a big part of what this team needed, specifically to get some things sorted out and have success.
"And, no, that wasn't the case early in the year. We're not in there right away, so we don't know what they're doing. But we never went into the locker room to give our halftime speech and saw stuff written on the dry erase board (by the players). There has been a progression towards that starting around the end of the season, maybe around the Minnesota game."
On March 5, Wisconsin overwhelmed the Gophers, 66-49, at the Kohl Center. A players-only meeting was held the day before. Positivity was stressed. The fact that they felt the urgency to talk about some things and communicate what they were feeling has helped spur a late-season run. Winners of five of their last six, the Badgers have now advanced to the Sweet 16 for a fourth-consecutive year.
"Guys are just more vocal, it seems like," said senior guard Bronson Koenig, who has been expanding his own postseason resume by making 11 of 23 shots from beyond the 3-point line in NCAA tournament wins over Virginia Tech and Villanova. "It almost seems like we're more into the game. We definitely weren't as vocal or as loud in the locker room, especially at halftime, earlier this season."
Improving communication, Koenig said, wasn't necessarily the focus of the players-only meeting.
"But everything we talked about led to that," he added.
Talking is merely one component of communication in a team environment. "I think we're just listening better," Hayes said. "We've been trying to communicate the same things, but now we're finally listening to what we're saying. We're doing a good job of talking amongst ourselves, we're listening and then we're going out there and executing it and that's making us a better team."
Before the Badgers opened play in last season's NCAA tournament, Hayes had a chance meeting with Michigan State coach Tom Izzo at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the first- and second-round site. Hayes wanted to know what made Izzo's teams so hard to beat in March. Izzo shared some thoughts on players taking more ownership in every facet of preparation from a "player-coached team" context.
"It's something I've learned from Coach Izzo and Coach Gard that the best teams, especially in March, are the player-coached teams," said Hayes referencing UW's locker room dynamic. "Say something or reiterate a message, or even say it before coach Gard does. It just serves its purpose better to have a visual and to hear it again."
To this end, there's a fundamental truth to every locker room exchange. "Sometimes," Hayes said, "players listen better to other players than they do the coaches. When it's from the coaches, it's 'Dang, he's yelling at me again.' But when it comes from one of your teammates, it's 'OK, I understand it better and maybe I'll do it better.'"
That was seconded by Paris. "Stuff is just different when it comes from the players instead of the coaches," he said. "They assume our role is to be critical of them in every situation, sometimes that's a natural instinct. But it's different when your peers are being critical of things, the guys who are in the fox hole with you, the guys you're spending time with off the court and having meals with."
Between the Big Ten tournament and the NCAA tournament in Buffalo, the Badgers were traveling together for a stretch of nine out of 10 days. Don't underestimate player bonding in the process.
"I definitely think it helps when we go on the road for weeks at a time," said Zak Showalter. "You spend all that time in the hotel, all that time eating dinner together. That's why I've always felt we play our best basketball in March, because you're just spending so much time together and kind of building those relationships even tighter at this time of the year."
It stands to reason that communication flourishes — not flounders — when that bond is strengthened by whatever means. How does that correlate to what takes place on the court in the heat of battle? Showalter supplied his own definition. "It's just being on the same page," he said. "That's the most important thing — knowing what the guy next to you is going to be doing if a certain situation happens.
"Sometimes it's not always vocal communication," he went on. "It can be playing together for so many times that you just understand what the other guy is going to do. Those two Final Four runs, with the group of guys that we had, their communication, verbally and non-verbally, was second to none. And I think we might be second to them in terms of that. Hopefully we can keep building."
Point guard Traevon Jackson was the catalyst of those teams.
"He was the most vocal leader I've ever been around," Showalter acknowledged. "He was a very positive guy. He just said whatever came to his mind in every situation. And that really helped that team. We've had to adjust and find a new way to kind of lead without having a vocal guy like Trae, who was always there when something went wrong and you were going to hear about it from him immediately."
Jackson had a unique way of making his point. Whatever point needed to be made.
"Trae was upfront," Vitto Brown remembered. "At the same time, he was wholesome, he wouldn't cuss you out. But he'd let you know how things were and he was never afraid to speak his mind. That's why he was such an awesome leader. He could hold himself accountable, but also put other guys in check to make sure they stepped up to it. We may not have a single Trae now."
At least no one with Jackson's personality or ability to motivate in that fashion.
"But as a team," Brown said, "our senior class has stepped up to fill the shoes Trae left behind."
That was out of necessity when the season began to spiral in the wrong direction.
"Maybe it was because our backs were against the wall," Koenig agreed.
That accounted for some of the urgency.
"Going through the struggles that we did, it had to bring us together," said Brown, lamenting not claiming the Big Ten's regular-season title when they were a position to do so. "Even when we were winning in the beginning, they were narrow wins. We weren't really winning convincingly. But we've all been able to look back on ourselves and at each other and hold each other more accountable now."
That opened the door and the lines of communication to more and improved dialogue between the players. "I guess we didn't need to (communicate) as much when we were winning," Brown reasoned. "But once we were struggling, we had to let each other know that at the end of the day, that we had each other's back. That was the message, the positivity and it has paid off."
Paris has noticed the difference. "The huddles have been better, the timeouts have been better, guys have communicated a little bit better," he said. "It has been a group thing. At one point or another, it has been different guys that have put their two cents in. There may not have been as many things that needed to be said (with the Final Four teams). These guys, at times, have had had to help each other.
"We've also played better. But the communication side of things has grown."
There may be no stronger voice than the combined voices of four experienced seniors.
"When it really came into play is when we were stumbling a little bit a month ago," Gard said. "We knew to, 'Just stay with the course, stick to the process.' It wasn't going to be irrational, outside the box changes. We just needed to get better at the things we do and become more consistent with it. And we were going to work ourselves out of it. That experience helps you through that time.
"They don't panic. There wasn't a frantic approach or anything like that in the locker room. We just needed to get better and we needed to play better. There wasn't going to be any magical solution."
That was the scenario last Saturday night at halftime of the Villanova game.
Take care of ball & rebound.
"We addressed it," said Showalter. "Those were the two things that if we did, we'd beat Villanova. We rebounded better. We still didn't take care of the ball as good as we could have. But we did better and that's why we won. We address issues more now at halftime. We address what is working well and what we need to do better defensively."
March is all about walking the walk. Talking the talk (amongst teammates) has helped make that happen. "You've got to talk on the floor," Brown said. "And obviously, there are times when you can't hear each other and you can't talk. So you just have to trust that person is there. That comes from the communication you've already established whether in practice or the locker room."
The Badgers appear to be finding their voice at the right time.
