Column: Greg Gard has Wisconsin basketball built to contend, still searching for more
Greg Gard has Wisconsin basketball consistently in the mix, but NCAA Tournament struggles leave questions about why the Badgers can't get over the hump.
The Wisconsin men’s basketball program closed the book on its 2025–26 season the same way it has far too often — abruptly, unexpectedly, and earlier than anyone inside the program believed it should.
An 83–82 loss to High Point, a 12-seed, in the opening round didn’t just end a season. It reopened a conversation that never really goes away.
By this time next year, it will have been a full decade since Wisconsin last reached the Sweet 16. That’s not a throwaway stat anymore. That’s a pattern. And patterns, fairly or not, tend to define people in this sport.
Greg Gard knows that. He’s living it.
What makes this situation complicated — and honestly, what makes it worth talking about beyond surface-level frustration — is that Gard’s tenure isn’t defined by failure. It’s defined by everything except the one thing people care about most in March: the NCAA Tournament.
This was a 24–11 team that earned a 5-seed. A group that beat five top-15 opponents. A team that, on multiple nights, looked capable of playing with just about anyone in the country. Offensively, it was one of the most productive groups in program history, averaging 83 points per game for the first time in more than five decades and setting the standard for what basketball in Madison can look like in a modern era.
That part matters. Because for a long time, the question surrounding Wisconsin wasn’t whether it could win — it was whether it could evolve.
Gard answered that.
He’s reshaped the program in real time, not in theory, not in messaging, but in action. From the way the roster is built to how NIL resources are allocated, from leaning into international pipelines to restructuring staff roles and embracing the transfer portal, this isn’t a head coach who is clinging to tradition and hoping that’s enough. This is someone actively trying to position his basketball program for where the sport is going.
And it’s worked, at least in getting Wisconsin to the table.
But the NCAA Tournament doesn’t grade you on progress. It doesn’t reward infrastructure. It doesn’t care how you got there.
