As the threes flew in one after another for the Wisconsin Badgers on Friday afternoon in Indianapolis, an uninitiated observer might have wondered if they were watching the right team.
But truthfully, the Badgers’ record-setting outburst of 19 made threes against the UCLA Bruins in the Big Ten tournament was only surprising if you hadn’t watched Greg Gard’s team yet this season. “New Wisconsin” plays fast, fires away from three at one of the highest rates in the country and is capable of putting up points with just about anyone in college basketball. It’s quite the modernization for a program that has long been known for its grind-it-out ethos, ranking 300th or slower nationally in tempo in eight of Gard’s first nine seasons as coach in Madison.
“You had to, otherwise we’d get left in the past,” Badgers center Steven Crowl says.
Wisconsin is the poster child for what has been a conference-wide shift in the Big Ten toward faster-paced, more modern basketball. What since the advent of analytics in college basketball has always been known as the slowest-paced, most post-up friendly conference in the sport is now in 2025 the fastest-paced high-major league nationally. It also features as many pro prospects as ever, with the most projected first-round picks (seven) of any league in ESPN’s most recent NBA mock draft and four of those mocked in the lottery.
“You’re seeing more free-flowing movement, you’re seeing more movement, you’re seeing more skilled bigs,” Northwestern Wildcats coach Chris Collins says. “Gone are the days of the power, physical, play two big guys, smashmouth [basketball].”
The big man certainly isn’t dead in the Big Ten. In fact, the league has one of the deepest stables of high-level frontcourt players in the country with potential All-Americans Trey Kaufman-Renn (Purdue Boilermakers) and Derik Queen (Maryland Terrapins) leading the way and a slew of others having big seasons. But there’s a diversity in skill set with these star big men, with most bringing far more than just an elite post presence. The Michigan Wolverines use 7-footer Danny Wolf like a point guard, initiating their offense in ball screens and scoring at all three levels. The Illinois Fighting Illini have turned to Tomislav Ivisic as one of their best passers and playmakers, using him in “short roll” and five-out situations with elite cutters running off those actions. Wisconsin will trot out two-big lineups with Crowl and Nolan Winter, but both are capable three-point shooters and their ability to pull opposing bigs away from the rim opens up driving lanes for star wings John Tonje and John Blackwell.
“It’s still big, but it’s not 36–33 final [scores],” Illinois coach Brad Underwood says, referencing the infamous 2011 Big Ten tournament game between the Penn State Nittany Lions and Wisconsin with that final score.
That’s part of what makes Wisconsin’s pivot so jarring. Gard is a Wisconsin lifer who learned for years under Bo Ryan and has largely attempted to maintain the aspects of the program that has made it one of the most consistent teams of the 21st century. Watching the Badgers fly the ball up the floor, get into ball screen action and shoot early in the shot clock like an NBA team still doesn’t feel quite right. But the 54-year-old has evolved, realizing his team needed to be better offensively to break through in March after failing to get out of the first weekend since 2017. He brought in former Badger player and longtime overseas pro Kirk Penney at the start of last season as a special assistant, but functionally Penney serves as the team’s offensive coordinator and is credited with leading the transition to Wisconsin’s faster, more free-flowing style. The Badgers started implementing the new offense during 2023–24, but things got taken to a new level in ’24–25 with a full offseason to fully embrace the changes.
“I saw that we needed to get somewhere and I had a pretty good idea, but when I brought Kirk Penney on my staff a year ago, he helped because he had played in so many systems internationally in different places,” Gard says. “That helped build a bridge to where we needed to go.”
In Gard’s eyes, much of the adaptation simply comes out of meeting a new generation of players where they are.
“A lot of these players come [here] playing in ball screens,” Gard says. “If you want to play at the next level, whether it’s in Europe or in the NBA, you have to be able to play in a pick-and-roll or you have to be able to shoot threes.”
But perhaps the most drastic embrace of modern, NBA-style hoops in the Big Ten has come at Illinois, where Underwood has evolved his style into something that resembles what Nate Oats has built with the Alabama Crimson Tide as well as several NBA teams. Underwood has said multiple times this season he’d be happy if his team took 50 threes in a game, and while they have yet to get there, the Illini have attempted 40-plus three times and have regularly topped 30 attempts per game. They’re extremely ball screen reliant with projected top-10 pick Kasparas Jakucionis at point guard, while fellow European import Ivisic has also brought a new element offensively as a passer.
“I think teams have had to adapt,” Underwood says. “I think the type of players, what they’re watching on TV, has forced everyone to adapt.”
The one team in the league still playing a rather traditional style: Michigan State. It’s hard to argue with the results: MSU won the Big Ten’s regular-season title by three games and is the league’s highest NCAA tournament seed despite being one of the worst three-point shooting teams in the country. The Spartans have won with toughness, defense and physicality, as well as superb guard play from freshman sensation Jase Richardson.
But Michigan State is also the one program in the conference that has consistently punched at or above its weight in March, with eight Final Four appearances and a national championship in Tom Izzo’s 30 years with the Spartans. The league’s overall March struggles (no national champions since Izzo’s 2000 Michigan State team) are a constant talking point and are hard to run from, regardless of the crapshoot nature of the single-elimination tournament. Those woes have often been attributed in part to the league’s physical, grind-it-out nature, a style that doesn’t necessarily play in the often guard-driven NCAA tournament. Could that change this year, with the league featuring more diverse play styles and several more offensive-oriented teams?
“The greatest thing about this league is there’s so many different styles,” Maryland coach Kevin Willard said. “Whoever we play on Thursday or Friday, we’re going to have seen that style, and I think it’s what’s really unique about this conference is it makes you adjust as a coach and makes you get better as a coach because you see so many different styles. It’s just not the same basketball night in and night out.”
For all the talk of defense winning championships, being elite on offense has largely been a prerequisite to winning college basketball’s biggest crown. Eleven of the last 12 national champions finished top 10 in offensive efficiency on KenPom, and five of the last six champs finished in the top five. Another consistent trend: having NBA talent. Every team to win it all since 2010 has had at least one first-round pick that year, and every team since 1987 Indiana has had at least one eventual first-rounder. Both those key factors are where the Big Ten is trending, and eventually that should lead to the March breakthrough fans of the league have been waiting for for a quarter-century.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Can the Big Ten’s New Fast-Paced Tempo Help Conference Win NCAA Tournament?.