Disintegration Hoops: An Ode to Virginia-Wisconsin and Ugly, Slow Basketball
The Hoos and the Badgers combined to score 86 points. And it was ghastlier than you’d think.
Watching basketball is like going to a rock concert. There can be variations in the experience, but on the whole, it’s upbeat and energetic. Occasionally, the beat slows for a mellow track, but each second of lethargy is offset by a dozen punctuated by chaos.
Watching the University of Virginia play Wisconsin is not like that.
It’s like listening to your favorite song, but at 1/1000th speed. On Monday, the two downtempo titans squared off in the ACC–Big Ten Challenge. The over/under for the game was set at 122. At halftime, only 44 points had been scored. By the time the final buzzer sounded, that figured had crept up to 86, and Wisconsin had tied for the second-fewest points scored in a game this season as it lost 49-37. Most nights, Virginia and Wisconsin are the tortoise and everyone else is the hare. This is what happens when two turtles meet.
There are 351 teams that play Division I basketball. Since Tony Bennett was hired prior to the 2009-10 season, Virginia has finished with slower pace than all of them once, and is on track to do the same this year. The Hoos haven’t played faster than 316th. In that same span, Wisconsin was the slowest team once, and save for an anomalous season in 2014, the team has never played faster than 319th.
At a time when basketball is getting faster at every level, Virginia and Wisconsin remain static. Their styles are glacial, but efficient. Why use 15 seconds of the shot clock when you can use 30? Why allow your opponent to score quick buckets when you can pester them, cut off driving lanes, and force them to burn clock on their own? Both programs consistently record top-half effective field goal percentages and boast some of the most efficient defenses in the country. They’ve been ranked highly and they've made deep tournament runs. The systems work. They know they may not have the most talented squads on the floor, but you can’t win games if you don’t score points, and these two teams are betting their opponents won’t score nearly as often as they do. But playing slowly isn’t just a strategy. It’s an art.
While the product is aesthetically displeasing, it’s still the same sport that fans enjoy—just at a pace that more closely resembles rec-league scrimmages than it does professional basketball. Watching these teams play elicits the same emotional response as reading a Grinnell College box score. Grinnell relies on a run-and-gun system of limited defense and a barrage of 3s, with rampant substitutions. Their point totals easily reach triple digits, and occasionally, individual players do, too. It’s just another way to game the system to find an advantage.
The earliest pace data tracked by KenPom.com is from 2002, the year after Tony Bennett’s father, Dick, left his position as Wisconsin’s head coach. That season, the Badgers were the 299th-fastest team out of 327. It was their fourth-quickest season to date. Dick Bennett instituted the same slow-ball technique that Wisconsin still utilizes to this day. It makes sense, then, that his son adopted the family mind-set and implemented the same plodding pace.
Some people dislike games featuring just a handful more possessions than one might find in a typical half of NBA basketball. My Ringer colleague Rodger Sherman is one of them, and took to the company Slack to voice his discontent.
“Who the fuck let Wisconsin play Virginia? That should be fucking illegal.”
Sherman, like most people who saw the box score, did not watch the game. He asked this video be sent as his official comment on the final score:
Monday was the third time the two teams played since Tony Bennett took over in Charlottesville. The first meeting was in 2012, when Virginia beat Wisconsin, 60-54. The second came the next year, when Wisconsin took its revenge, 48-38. After the win, starting guard Josh Gasser took pride in the effort in a way only a Hoo or a Badger could.