Within a matter of weeks, the Badgers basketball team has lost redshirt-freshman DeAaron Williams, freshman star Marcus Landry, and sophomore big-man Greg Stiemsma - all due to academic reasons. Since the time that all three players have been out, the Badgers have gone 1-3 and are about to head into a match up with #7 Illinois on Tuesday.

Although it’s 1:30AM right now and I’m working off a hazy memory of today’s loss at Michigan, here’s my short list of things I’m worried about:

1.) First half shooting percentage. I’m not going to look up exact figures, but I’ll put a guarantee on the fact that if we shoot 33% or less in the first half of ANY road game this year, we’ll lose.

2.) Which leads into #2… we’re down 7 points, get a stop, and then can’t convert - whether it’s a missed lay-up, bad pass, whatever… we don’t seem to be taking advantage of presented opportunities.

3.) Passion. Whether team members being out has got the team down, or just the poor shooting, it seems like until the last minutes of the game no one seems to really be fired up - except for Kam Taylor on occasion.

4.) Not finishing. I can’t begin to count the amount of lay-ups Tucker missed today, as well as, the team missing possible 3-point play opportunities all year. It’s great we’re getting to the rim to draw a foul, but there’s no reason these 6′6″++ athletes can’t power the ball to the rim and get the shot to fall more often.

There’s more - really - but I’m exhausted. I’ll be sitting in the 6th row on Tuesday night when Illinois comes to the Kohl Center. I can only hope that Bucky decides to kick it into high gear when it counts. The conference now has a 4-way tie for first place, and Wisconsin could be sitting back on top all alone (at least for a day) if they can pull out the upset win on Tuesday.

But they’ve got to get some traction on that slippery slide…

On a side note, I’ll be seeing the Monster Trucks in Madison tomorrow (well, today I guess) with Heather and Eli…. should be fun… :)