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If Bo Ryan isn’t considered for the Big Ten coach of the year it would be a travesty. He has his Wisconsin Badgers overachieving this season as they won their 20th victory of the season with a 77-46 win over the Nebraska Cornhuskers in Madison, Wisconsin tonight.
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The Badgers now sit 20-8 and 11-4 in conference play and still realistically has a shot at sharing the conference title. That’s remarkable for a team that no one gave a chance to entering this season. They lost four games alone in the non-conference schedule and didn’t look good doing so.
Tonight, they showed why they’ve been winners in 14 of their last 18 games in manhandling the Huskers in the Kohl Center. Many would look at this coming into tonight that the Badgers should take care of business by a lot and not think anything else of it.
But, this is the exact same Badgers squad that every tabbed as a team with no talent, no bench and undersized. Most of that is true with Wisconsin as they don’t go very deep in playing only seven to eight players on any given night and don’t have much size to matchup well with bigger teams.
They also don’t have much talent as most of these guys are system players without much skill to take over on their own. Jared Berggren will be the only player that will be considered for a postseason award as he’d be lucky to make the All-Big Ten second team. Everyone else just plays their roles.
That’s why Ryan should be highly considered for the coach of the year as he has this team in the hunt for a Big 10 title with this type of team. Most coaches would be happy to finish eighth or ninth with this type of team but Ryan looks like he will keep his streak of finishing in the top four of the regular Big Ten standings every year he’s been at Wisconsin going.
They have two very winable games with Purdue and at Penn State and a tough contest in East Lansing at Michigan State. They should now be 13-5 at worst case scenario going into the Big Ten Tournament in March. That’s flat out remarkable.
