3 thoughts on Wisconsin basketball’s 83-82 NCAA Tournament loss to High Point

Wisconsin men's basketball falls 83-82 to High Point in the NCAA Tournament as the Badgers’ season ends in a first-round upset.

Wisconsin Badgers guard Nick Boyd drives the lane against High Point during the NCAA Tournament. Photo credit: UW Athletics.

There’s a certain kind of silence that follows a game like that. Not the kind that comes from being outplayed. Not the kind where you tip your cap and move on. The kind that lingers because you know it didn’t have to end the way it did.

Greg Gard and the fifth-seeded Wisconsin men’s basketball team (24-11) saw their season come to a sudden and disappointing close Thursday afternoon, falling 83–82 to No. 12 seed High Point in the first round of the NCAA Tournament — another instance of the 12-over-5 upset that seems to find its way into this program’s history books more often than it should.

And just like that, it’s over.

A team that spent the latter part of the season reshaping its identity, playing some of its best basketball down the stretch, and entering March believing its ceiling was still out in front of it is now left with another early exit from the NCAA Tournament and a familiar set of questions.

“Congratulations to High Point,” Gard said. “They played a terrific game and hit some unbelievable shots. That’s the heartache that comes with this tournament — a team plays exceptionally well, and you get sent home when you don’t take care of the things you need to take care of.

“I’m extremely proud of my group for getting us to this point. They’ve grown immensely. The worst part is we don’t get to go to practice again together. This group has grown together. Today sucks. Today stinks.”

Here are three observations following Wisconsin’s loss to High Point.

1. It was the first time scoring 80+ wasn't enough

For most of this season, Wisconsin had a pretty clear formula for winning games. Score into the 80s, take care of the ball, trust your shot-making, and more often than not, you’re walking off the floor with a win.

They were 21–0 when they scored 80 or more points.

Until Thursday.

Wisconsin finished with 82 points. Shot 48% from the field and nearly 40% from three. On paper, that’s a winning profile. It had been all year.

But this one didn’t follow the script.

High Point didn’t just hang around. They matched every push Wisconsin made, possession for possession, and then flipped the game in a way that felt sudden but was really building for the entire second half.

Nine made threes after the break will do that.

And when you zoom out, that’s really where this thing turned. Wisconsin hit shots, but High Point hit more. The Badgers went 9-of-23 from deep. High Point knocked down 15. In a one-possession game, that gap is everything. And it wasn’t like they were just getting them up at a high volume and living with the results. High Point shot 15-of-40 from three, including 9-of-17 in the second half. That’s over 50% after the break.

When a team is shooting it like that — and doing it at that volume — it puts a ton of pressure on every possession defensively.

“We knew they were going to the offensive glass,” Gard admitted. “That’s evident in their numbers and on film. I thought we got better at keeping them off the glass in the second half.

“But the three-point shooting — they hit timely threes. It took that type of shooting, 15 threes, to counter what we were doing. It’s a credit to them. You can contest them, but they were able to knock them down.”

They got production from their stars, but not quite enough in the moments that mattered most.

Nick Boyd gave you a strong performance. 27 points on 10-of-20 shooting from the field, five boards, six assists, one turnover. He controlled the game for long stretches and had Wisconsin in position late. In fact, his layup with just over a minute left put the Badgers up 82–78. At that point, it felt like the Badgers had High Point right where they wanted them.

John Blackwell looked like he was about to take the game over early. He had 20 points and six rebounds in the first half, but finished with 22 and 10 rebounds. But the five turnovers were costly — a tale of two halves for Blackwell, and in a game with margins this tight, they couldn’t afford that.

Austin Rapp chipped in 12 points, knocked down a pair of threes, and had four rebounds. The Badgers’ complementary pieces did their job.

Wisconsin, for the most part, was efficient enough across the board. 31-of-65 from the field, 11-of-12 at the free-throw line, and just 10 turnovers. Those are typically winning numbers. That’s a profile that had carried them all season. But when the other team is hitting threes at that clip, efficiency alone doesn’t separate you the way it usually does.

By every standard Wisconsin set this season, that should’ve been enough. It just wasn’t enough on this particular night.

2. High Point won the game on the margins — and with physicality

On paper, this looked like a matchup Wisconsin should control physically.

High Point didn’t start anyone taller than 6-foot-8. Nolan Winter was back in the mix, but came off the bench. The size advantage was there.

But it didn’t play out that way.

High Point out-rebounded Wisconsin 40–37. Pulled down double-digit offensive boards, many of them coming off long misses that turned into second-chance threes. They forced turnovers, disrupted passing lanes, protected the ball, and blocked shots. They were just sharper in the areas that decide games like this. They were the more physical team.

And when you pair that with the 3-point shooting, it created this constant feeling that High Point was never really out of it — like every possession mattered and you were just waiting to see if they’d swing it back their way. Even when Wisconsin had control late, it never quite felt secure.

Up four with just over a minute to play after Boyd’s layup. That’s a situation this team has closed out more often than not.

But from there, it flipped.

Boyd drove to his left again, looking to extend the lead, but couldn’t finish, and High Point pushed it the other way in transition. Chase Johnston — a guy who had made a living behind the arc all season — ends up wide open at the rim and converts what was, unbelievably, his first made two-point field goal of the year to take the lead with 11.7 seconds left.

That’s March.

It doesn’t always make sense. It doesn’t always follow the tendencies you’ve scouted. It just happens. From there, Wisconsin never really got a clean look to answer. A poor inbound pass, no real chance to even get something up.

Ballgame.

“We took the timeout to stop the clock,” Gard explained. “We had a play on the inbound, and the inbounder had a few options. One was to throw it deep to Nolan. Rapp was back there as well.

“We knew we had to advance the ball to try to get something more than a half-court heave. We wanted to get it into the front court if we could.”

To their credit, Winter gave them what he could. Eight points, four boards, two assists, two blocks in 21 minutes. Clearly not himself, but he competed hard and provided a spark.

Aleksas Bieliauskas finished with just two points, but did a lot of the dirty work. Seven rebounds, three offensive, plus a block — impacting the game in ways that don’t always show up in the box score. But collectively, it wasn’t enough to win the possession battle. And in a game like this, that’s the difference.

3. The Sweet 16 drought continues

At some point, it becomes part of the conversation whether you want it to or not. Wisconsin still hasn’t reached the Sweet 16 since 2017.

And in a one-and-done tournament where anything can happen, that alone wouldn’t mean much. But when you stack it up against the number of good teams, competitive seasons, and opportunities that this basketball program has had over that stretch, it becomes a fair criticism.

Because eventually, for Greg Gard, the breakthrough has to happen, and until it does, this is the conversation.

It took a performance like that from High Point. A team playing at the level it needed to pull the upset. And sometimes, that’s just how March works. But that doesn’t make it any less disappointing.

Not when you have one of the best backcourts in the country. Not when you’ve spent the last two months playing your best basketball. Not when you’ve built a team that, on paper, looked capable of making a deep run.

And yet, here we are again.

This wasn’t a team that limped into March. Wisconsin beat five top-15 teams and had found an identity offensively that gave it an incredibly high ceiling. With Boyd and Blackwell playing at the level they were, you could make a legitimate case they had one of the best backcourts in the country — and the kind of shot-making that travels in this tournament.

Coach Gard isn’t on any kind of hot seat, and he shouldn’t be. You don’t throw away an entire season — or an entire body of work — because of one game. That’s not how this works.

But at the same time, the reality is what it is.

Wisconsin has been a highly successful program by almost any measure. Still, it hasn’t had the postseason results you’d expect — and that cloud hanging over Gard and the Badgers isn’t going anywhere until it changes.

You can point to the details of this game. The defensive lapses. The clean looks allowed. The late scoring drought. The missed opportunities at the end, not even getting a shot off with 1.8 seconds left.

You can point to Blackwell’s dominant first half and quiet second. Boyd doing everything he could down the stretch. Moments where it felt like Wisconsin had control, only to let it slip away.

All of that matters.

But in the end, the only thing that really matters is the outcome.

Wisconsin didn’t win.

And when that happens in March, everything else — the growth, the late-season surge, the offensive identity this team built — tends to fade into the background a little more than it probably should.

That’s the part that stings.

Because this was a really good team. A fun team. A group that figured itself out and gave itself a chance. But until that second weekend breakthrough happens for Gard, the questions aren’t going anywhere.

“They’ll look back on how far they’ve come and what they’ve accomplished this year, and they’ll do that with a lot of pride in the bonds they’ve formed over the past six months,” Gard said, reflecting.

And that’s the part that will linger. Not just how it ended, but the feeling that there was still more out there for this group. And now, it’s another long offseason with that same question still waiting to be answered.

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