What Wisconsin coach Greg Gard said after losing to No. 9 BYU

Over the first two weeks of the regular season, Wisconsin appeared to be a legitimate offensive force, averaging more than 93 points per game through four contests.

But Friday afternoon against BYU, the Badgers found themselves humbled a bit.

Wisconsin fell 98-70 to the Cougars at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, with the Badgers suffering their first loss of the year and struggling mightily on both ends of the floor.

Even worse, such a defeat came against the same BYU squad who ended Wisconsin’s season just eight months ago in the NCAA Tournament.

“I thought we got out of character of who we needed to be and who we have been and who we’re going to have to be going forward,” Wisconsin coach Greg Gard said after the game. “We can’t stray and get off the track if we have a possession or two or three that go wrong, right? I thought in the first half we did, we got out of character a little bit.

“You can say, ‘Well, we didn’t make shots,’ but if you have a level of toughness about you, you’re going to find a way to make shots, and you’ll find a way to get stops, and you’ll find a way to clean up the defensive glass. So, those things we didn’t do consistently enough. And that’s something that we’re going to have to get a lot better at.”

The Badgers shot 37.7% from the field and 24.1% from 3-point range, committing 12 turnovers and spending practically the entire game playing from behind.

BYU’s Richie Saunders, who terrorized Wisconsin in the NCAA Tournament earlier this year, did so once again Friday afternoon. Saunders posted 26 points with three boards, two assists, two steals and five made 3-pointers.

“He impacts the game without scoring ... Saunders does that really well,” Gard said. “He obviously draws a lot of attention because you have to chase him and stay attached with him, but he does so many things that don’t involve scoring. Rebounding, for an example, he just plays hard.

“You know, he plays the game the right way. He’s got a little chip on his shoulder, he has an edge to him, and that it’s infectious because then that spreads to other guys on the team.”

1 of 20

2 of 20

3 of 20

4 of 20

5 of 20

6 of 20

7 of 20

8 of 20

9 of 20

10 of 20

11 of 20

12 of 20

13 of 20

14 of 20

15 of 20

16 of 20

17 of 20

18 of 20

19 of 20

20 of 20

With the loss, Wisconsin will likely fall out of the next AP top 25 rankings, but the Badgers have the chance to right the ship in their next matchup with Big East foe Providence on Thursday at the Rady Children’s invitational in San Diego.

Following Providence, Wisconsin would face either the defending national champion Florida Gators or TCU.

“I didn’t like how we responded from a toughness standpoint. We got out of ourselves, and we are going to learn a lot from this,” Gard said. “When you get knocked around like this, and kicked around … what we have to fix, there are technical things, but then how do we respond?

“We’ve got a lot more coming, with games like this, in terms of high-level games. We need to take a lot of lessons from this, both good and bad, and learn from them and grow.”