Discussing, and lamenting, the 2024-25 Wisconsin Badgers women’s basketball team.
Ohio State women’s basketball is one of three remaining undefeated teams in Division-I basketball. The Buckeyes are 16-0 despite replacing three starters and playing with 10-player active roster, all the while with a freshman running point and pushing the Scarlet and Gray to the top of the early Big Ten standings.
For Wisconsin, the Badgers started the conference strong with a win over the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, but followed it with five straight losses to the likes of the Indiana Hoosiers, Minnesota Golden Gophers and Maryland Terrapins.
Even so, the Badgers have an All-American caliber forward in Serah Williams and a returning roster featuring 75.7 percent of their 2023-24 scoring core. To learn more about the Badgers from someone who knows them well, Land-Grant Holy Land talked with Drew Hamm from the independent Badgers Ball Knower blog.
Not only does Hamm know all there is to know about the Badgers, he also creates an annual conference preview document that even Maryland head coach Brenda Frese supports.
Here’s what he had to say about Wisconsin, in the Visiting Locker Room:
Land-Grant Holy Land: Head coach Marisa Moseley brought in Carter McCray from the Horizon League this offseason, and the move to the Big Ten hasn’t been too big of a jump for the sophomore. How has she helped the Badgers?
Badgers Ball Knower: McCray had a dominant season at Northern Kentucky as a freshman, especially rebounding the ball, and her move to the Big Ten this year has certainly been more of a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. She and Serah Williams have sometimes formed a bit of an awkward partnership in the post, as Williams is slowly developing an outside game and McCray has a mostly non-existent one, and they can sometimes find themselves trying to occupy the same area.
Being out there with Williams has also cut into McCray’s overall rebounding numbers, but her rebounding rates (98th percentile off. rebounding; 78th percentile def. rebounding) are still excellent. She is also scoring at an extremely efficient clip, sporting a 60.7% eFG% (96th%) and averaging 1.02 PPP (94th%). Her usage is down but that efficiency is up, which is what you like to see, baby!
Per Torvik’s ratings, McCray is the second most valuable player on the Badgers and I think the eye test would probably say the same thing. When she aggressively attacks the basket there aren’t a ton of players who can keep her away from the rim, however at 6-foot-1 she can be overwhelmed by taller post players defensively.
LGHL: Serah Williams is having another Serah Williams-esque season for Wisconsin. What is Williams doing differently this year than her previous two?
BBK: For the Badgers to have a chance to upset Ohio State (or beat anyone remaining on the schedule) Serah Williams has to be at her best. During this current five-game losing streak, Williams has had four of her worst five offensive ratings of the year and I’m no rocket doctor but I’d guess those two things are highly correlated. Now, she is still playing at an All-Big Ten level overall, she is just in a slump which she is slowly breaking out of.
There are actually a number of things that Williams has improved on from last year. She has better and more varied post moves this year; her mid-range game is looking better; her turnovers are down, despite her usage being up; and she has wildly improved her passing, especially out of double teams. Her assist rate of 21.3 this season blows her career best mark from last year (8.6) out of the water.
The one disappointing thing so far has been that she is performing far worse against the top teams on UW’s schedule so it’s pretty lucky that Ohio State is only…undefeated and ranked in the top-10. Uh-oh.
LGHL: The move to a 15-team Big Ten Tournament has turned the bottom of the standings into something like a soccer relegation battle, with teams hoping to avoid being relegated to the couch in the first weekend of March. Right now, the Badgers are in 14th place. Looking at their remaining schedule, do you see Wisconsin staying in the top 15?
BBK: Short answer? No.
Long answer? Still “no” but I’ll give you a few reasons! The main one is this: the Big Ten is a very good conference and Wisconsin isn’t anywhere close to being a very good team. Per Torvik, Wisconsin is favored to win in one (home vs. Northwestern) of their remaining 12 games. While the Badgers probably ARE better than the Wildcats, NU is 9-1 in their last 10 games against Wisconsin soooooo, you know.
The Badgers have already beaten Rutgers, one of the teams below them in the standings, and have matchups against Purdue, Northwestern, and Penn State upcoming, but by the time the game against the Boilermakers comes around, Wisconsin will quite likely be on a nine-game losing streak. That doesn’t really scream “ready to beat Purdue on the road to secure a much-needed win for Big Ten Tournament qualification” to me.
This has been a frustrating season for Wisconsin. It’s Year 4 of Marisa Moseley’s tenure and while the team has improved their win total in each of her first three seasons there hasn’t really been a moment where you felt the team was close to breaking through from the bottom of the conference. They are probably the worst recruiting team in the Big Ten despite playing in a state that produces a surprising amount of national-level talent. There don’t seem to be any AAU connections that Moseley has developed either as many of her recent recruits have been from overseas.
Southern Cal and UCLA are obviously going to be top teams in the Big Ten moving forward and Wisconsin is nowhere close to being in their ballpark, but last week UW was in the Pacific Northwest for a two-game road trip and got absolutely blasted by Oregon AND Washington. Winning at Wisconsin in women’s basketball shouldn’t be as difficult as it has been for, oh, just about ever and yet here we are once again! I could go on, but I feel like I’ve gone off the rails already for this single-game preview on an Ohio State blog.
Anyways, if Wisconsin keeps the deficit below 20 on Thursday, I’m counting it as a win.