Tough teams have an "edge" to them. Shields good teams had an edge. Hard-nosed and blue collar. I liked those teams - a lot. I like this team, also, but it is a different sort of team. It evidently does not hang its hat on defense as much as in the past. It is easy to have an edge when you focus on defense; less so when you are more an offensive team, and especially less when that offense is 3-point shooting. My observation is that in most cases, teams that live by the 3 tend to be "soft" teams. There are exceptions, of course, but that is a fair generalization in my experience, because teams that live on the perimeter tend to think they do not have to be as physical, and teams that are not physical usually are soft. However, there are those exceptions, which show that it can be done. Wisconsin is one of them. They are a 3-point team, but no Bo Ryan team is going to be soft. And that is what we are going to have to do now that conference has started. We need to play better defense than we have been, but especially we have to get that "crisis management" mentality - the ability to step up when the going is critical.
No one, looking at the stats, would pick us, at this point, to win the Belt. So if we are going to win it, we are going to have to play better than our stats, and to do that you have to be tough. We have to play so that after the game, someone looks at the stat sheet and says, "How did they win that?" We just made plays when we had to make plays, and to do that you have to be tough.
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