In case of emergency, Wisconsin's coaches broke out Platteville DVD

INDIANAPOLIS — The day after Wisconsin's last loss on the basketball court, Greg Gard went searching for a DVD he hadn't watched in years.

On it were clips of Wisconsin-Platteville's 1992 NCAA Division III third-place team and 1995 NCAA champion team that included Gard as an assistant coach under head coach Bo Ryan. Employing the same system that Ryan uses at Wisconsin, Platteville had won 90% of its games and four national championships between 1991 and 1999.

Gard took the DVD to Ryan and said, "Coach, I think it's time to take a look at it."

Ryan said, "Show me what you got."

It had been 14 years, their first in Madison, since they had watched the DVD. It was grainy in parts and no longer had the ability to pause or rewind. But on Feb. 25, one day after the Badgers had lost 59-53 at Maryland, Gard felt it was time to show it to the team. Wisconsin's point total vs. the Terrapins was its second-lowest of the season, and its lowest in a losing effort.

"We just thought I think we were a little too soft at Maryland," Gard said Sunday. "We just weren't ourselves. Obviously they played really well, it was in a hostile environment … and those films from that year obviously really accentuates what we weren't really good at at the time."

The Badgers (38-3) sat and watched proper execution of hard cutting, screen setting, sharing the ball, moving without the ball and not overdribbling.

While Ryan and Gard sat in the back of the room and were reminded of how simple their system looked when it was working, Wisconsin senior guard Josh Gasser said he and his teammates were reminded of a point Ryan occasionally makes: Even though his Badgers players are more talented than his Pioneers team, they won't win without following the same fundamentals.

Some players didn't need a reminder from their head coach. Sophomore forward Nigel Hayes said, "Him showing us that was him just saying, 'We didn't play great offensively,' and to us we were like, 'OK, we're still being talked about as one of the best, most efficient offenses in the country. I'm sure we don't need to watch the swing offense from 19-whatever. We know how to play offense.'

"The fact was in that game, scoring wasn't the problem. The problem was we let them score more points than we were able to score. So it's not like our offense as the problem that game. It was just maybe that he was sending a message."

The coaching staff was definitely sending a message, and the team got it. "We realized we needed to do some things differently," senior forward Duje Dukan said, "and I think some switches went off in our heads and we realized what we needed to do if we wanted to get to the position that we're at now."

That position is in the program's first NCAA championship game since 1941. Since their coaches broke out the DVD, the Badgers have won 11 consecutive games, a Big Ten regular season championship, a Big Ten tournament championship, an NCAA West Region championship and knocked off a 38-0 Kentucky team.

"I think it was a little bit of a kick in the pants," Gard said, "and the game was a kick in the pants too, and I think that reaffirmed some things like, alright, let's get back to basics and be who we are."