We make winning look bad

Yesterday's men's basketball game was so typical of many of Wisconsin's games, both this year and in past years. All of us watching the game together on TV, complaining about how terrible Wisconsin is playing. It seems like we're getting dominated on the offensive glass (a look at the stats shows we weren't, but it seemed that way), we're not defending their perimeter shooters, we're taking stupid shots, etc. Everyone I talked to about the game focused on how ugly our team looked, and they did look pretty sloppy though much of the game. We did win the game though.

We seem to win a lot of those games. When we look bad, it seems like other teams consistently play down to our level. I don't know enough about the ins and outs of basketball to be able to explain why, but it seems like we must be doing something to make our opponents play sloppy. There's no way we're pulling out all these ugly games on luck alone.

One of Wisconsin's biggest strengths is our ability to win ugly games. Any team can win when their shots are falling and they're doing everything right. But even the best teams have off nights. Wisconsin seems to have a skill for pulling out wins even when they stink up the joint. In the tournament, where one off night can end it, this ability to find a way to win may be huge.

Our football team also has a skill in winning ugly games. Witness our bowl game, in which we seemed to be getting throughly outplayed by Arkansas for large chunks of the game. Stocco seems to be the personification of winning while making it look bad. In three years as a starter, very few Wisconsin fans have found many nice things to say about him except that he did win a lot of games.

Just think of Wisconsin as the Sam Cassell of college sports.