Maryland men’s basketball is hours away from a pivotal showdown vs. 17th-ranked Wisconsin, but BTN analyst Andy Katz still believes Wednesday’s contest should be a higher profile game.
“I will continue to hammer this: this should be a top-25 matchup,” Katz said on BTN.
Wednesday marks the lone matchup between the two teams this season with Maryland and Wisconsin entering a combined 12-7 in conference play with both coming off a win. While Katz noted Purdue, Illinois and Michigan State are viewed as the top three teams in the conference, he went on to predict Maryland ending up as the fourth in the final Big Ten standings after pointing to the schedule.
“Maryland has already down all the West Coast stuff – UCLA came in, went to Northwestern. Wisconsin has to go to Michigan State, has to go to Purdue and that’s the thing – scheduling matters here. Michigan’s loss to Purdue the other night and the way they lost was a bit of a red flag to me.”
Katz also noted Michigan and Wisconsin likely battle Maryland for fourth in the conference, making Wednesday’s game even more important as teams begin to gain separation in the standings. But with all five averaging double figures scoring so far this season, Katz once again credited Kevin Willard’s portal success while noting the starting five’s balance.
“These are players that worked well together. They all can score in a variety of ways. They're winners, and that five I would put up against really almost any team in the country in terms of being competitive with a chance to win. Are they going to get to the Final Four? I'm not saying that, but this is a team – I really believe – this is a team when they are clicking, that potentially could be a second weekend team in the NCAA Tournament.”
So how will they stack up against the Badgers?
“First of all, tons of credit to Greg Gard of sort of adjusting to his personnel. And they've got scorers. They get up and down,” Katz said. “They are one of the better offenses we've seen from the Badgers in quite some time, maybe going back ten years to when they went to those back to back Final Fours in [2014] and [2015]. John Tonje, who, as you know, went to your alma mater, Missouri, was hurt. He was a big-time scorer at Colorado State and people kind of forgot about him. Outside of the one game at USC where he didn't score, and yet the Badgers still won, he's been really consistent. I saw him get over 40 [points] against Arizona. He's got that in him. And then you pair him with John Blackwell. Blackwell is a great case. We talked about this early in the show. If you missed this, we talked about the freshman class, the sophomores at Michigan State. Here's another great example. Wisconsin's got a couple with Blackwell and [Nolan] Winter. Guard-big stayed, stayed true to everything. Got better, and Blackwell has now become one of the best scores in the Big Ten. You pair him up with Tonje’s experience. Klesmit is back, another experienced guard, Steven Crohl’s in his like, you know, 12th year. And you know, he's obviously an experienced big as well.”
“The problem here for Wisconsin's bigs will be dealing with the sort of the ferociousness, if you will, of the physical size of Derik Queen because they're going to have to really just try to keep him off the backboard and Crohl and Winter are a little bit more sort of Euro bigs. They're not going to mix it up as much. I think it's harder for on the defensive side for Queen to come all the way up to guard them, that's going to be hard. So actually, it's going to be difficult on both sides, because that's going to be hard for Queen. But on the other side, it's going to be hard for the Wisconsin bigs to be inside.”
What does Katz view as the biggest X-factor in tonight’s matchup? “The crowd” with a sold-out student section announced with students back in Xfinity Center for the first time since the Dec. 4 24-point win vs. Ohio State.
“Those highlights you just saw against Nebraska. Students were not in session for that home game, so it looked a little dead in here. And as you know here at XFINITY, it's a huge place. It's very cavernous if they don't have it packed and that won't be the case tonight. They've got the complete side wall where they run the flag down in the second half, that's going to be a great atmosphere.”
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