Stock up, stock down for Wisconsin men's basketball after win over Northern Illinois
Wisconsin men’s basketball moved to 2–0 with a dominant win over Northern Illinois. Here’s the full stock report on who’s trending up, who’s falling, and what it all means for the Badgers.
The Kohl Center faithful didn’t need long to realize that the No. 24-ranked Wisconsin men’s basketball team showed up ready to run on offense.
In their second game of the season, the Badgers pushed the tempo, dealt with an uneven rhythm created by constant whistles, and still powered their way to a convincing 97–72 win over Northern Illinois to move to 2–0.
If the win over Campbell was a glimpse of what this new roster might become, the Northern Illinois matchup felt like confirmation of just how much firepower Greg Gard might have at his disposal. Wisconsin opened the game on a 20–5 run, scored on its first nine offensive possessions, and built a 36–14 lead before the first media timeout even rolled around.
And while the 52 fouls that resulted in 68 trips to the charity stripe made the game a bit choppy, the Badgers were always in control of the game. It helps when you’ve got multiple players on the roster setting new career highs. The Badgers lived at the free-throw line, going 28-for-37, and once again turned their collective size and pace into an offensive advantage.
It marked the first time since 1993 that the Wisconsin men’s basketball team scored 90-plus points in each of its first two games.
Even with the offense humming, the other end of the floor delivered plenty of encouraging signs. Wisconsin gave up 47% shooting but countered by forcing 17 turnovers, winning the rebounding battle 36–25, keeping fast-break damage to a minimum, and holding NIU under a point per possession at 0.986. It was a performance built on effort and disruption.
“I thought we were really intense from the beginning and really focused pretty much the whole game,” Gard said. “The only thing defensively I didn’t like was we fouled too much at times, and some of it is going to be learning opportunities where we didn’t jump properly at the rim… maybe we reached where we didn’t need to reach and used our hands too early in a dribble-drive situation. But I didn’t think we got beat to the rim.
“Our help was there earlier, and we were better for the most part at containing the dribble. I’ll look through the film and see what we can clean up. I like the consistency of our defensive discipline. The intensity was really good early, and we were able to sustain it for the most part.”
No matter how the Huskies responded, Wisconsin maintained its poise, generated turnovers, ran in transition, and relied on contributions from up and down the roster. For a team still learning its rotation and figuring out where its depth can come from, it was an encouraging showing.
With that in mind, here’s whose stock is rising and falling after Wisconsin’s win over Northern Illinois.
📈 Stock up: Nick Boyd
Nick Boyd plays with a gear Wisconsin hasn’t had at point guard in a while. He can get downhill, push tempo, and force defenses to react. If he finds the right tempo with this roster and they continue to gel, look out.
At the break, Boyd had 20 points and would go on to finish with 25 on 8-of-16 shooting from the field and 6-of-8 from the line. Boyd dished out three assists, grabbed three rebounds, and had two steals in 27 minutes.
“They just have to respect my teammates out on the court so much,” Boyd said. “It gives me so much space to play, which is why I wanted to come here. When we get stops, I have the freedom to just fly down the court, so I love that too. Between being aggressive, them giving me the space with their ability to shoot, and us playing fast — it’s just my type of game.”
Boyd is going to be one of the catalysts of Wisconsin’s offense, and how well he meshes with this group will go a long way in determining the Badgers’ ceiling. He showed a different dimension against NIU. The ability to run in transition, get downhill, and keep defenses on their heels will give Wisconsin ways to manufacture offense even on nights when the 3-point shooting isn’t there. This is the version of Boyd the staff envisioned.
📉 Stock down: Wisconsin’s small-ball lineup
With Austin Rapp, who finished with eight points, six rebounds, and three assists, battling foul trouble and Will Garlock doing everything he could just to stay on the floor, Wisconsin briefly dipped into its small-ball options, and the results showed this is still very much a work in progress.
Sophomore wing Jack Robison logged five minutes, three coming in the first half, grabbed an offensive rebound, and promptly turned it over. It wasn’t catastrophic, but it underscored how thin Wisconsin is when they have to reach for their emergency frontcourt options.
“Who handles game time? Everybody wants to play until they get their name called, right?” Gard said. “I thought Jack did some good things. I think he was solid. The one rebound where he lost it — he said he got fouled. I said, ‘No, we don’t say we got fouled; we just didn’t chin the ball.’
“I don’t know if I caught him by surprise, throwing him in there, but I knew he was a good matchup in terms of like-sized guys, and we could switch some things if we needed to. And I trust him on the offensive end to make good decisions. I tell him all the time — stay ready so you don’t have to get ready, because you never know when I’m going to call your name.”
Gard’s point was simple: Robison’s minutes weren’t pretty, but they were functional. It was about survival. With Rapp and Garlock sidelined by fouls, Wisconsin just needed someone to hold the line until halftime so the frontcourt could reset and get back on the floor. Robison helped them get through that, and in a game like this, that was really the assignment.
Wisconsin is still figuring out what it has in the frontcourt. Nolan Winter continues to anchor the group, finishing with 12 points, seven rebounds, and two blocks, but behind him, the picture gets much thinner. Garlock showed he can give functional minutes defensively. And while Aleksas Bieliauskas is still very much a work in progress, he’s also someone the staff expects to develop into a reliable piece as the season goes on.
But after Elijah Gray’s dismissal, the Badgers lost the one extra big man who projected as that “just hold the line for a few minutes” option. That absence is showing. We’ve already seen Gard experiment with four-guard lineups, including John Blackwell being used at the four during the preseason, and that alone signals where things stand. Wisconsin simply doesn’t have a true safety-valve rotation piece when foul trouble hits.
Many nights, it won’t matter. But in the games where it does, this remains the roster spot most likely to put them in a bind.