Jim Polzin: Why Greg Gard has to have an eye on next season before this one’s even over

Greg Gard was straddling two seasons on Friday, a delicate but necessary dance for the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball coach.

While UW was preparing to play North Texas in a semifinal of the National Invitation Tournament — the Badgers (20-14) will face the Mean Green (29-7) Tuesday at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas — Gard and his staff were hosting a prospect from the NCAA transfer portal on a visit to campus.

Awkward? Probably a little bit. Challenging? Definitely. Avoidable? Not really.

The portal opened on March 13 and it has been filling up ever since. All of this is happening while the 2022-23 season is still going. More than 100 teams were about to start the postseason when the portal opened two weeks ago, and eight teams, including the Badgers, have yet to reach the finish line.

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“The teams that are still playing,” Gard said, “are getting penalized for winning.”

Gard hardly can stand by and watch this all play out because he has needs to address in the portal after a season in which UW failed to reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2018 and only the second time since 1998.

More on that later, because monitoring the portal is only one of the things occupying Gard’s time while guiding the Badgers through the postseason.

There’s also the matter of what essentially is re-recruiting players already on his roster. Gard admitted he’s sat down with some of his players for conversations that typically wouldn’t take place until after the last game has been played.

Here’s the way things used to go: A season would end, a few days would pass as everybody took a deep breath and coaches would begin the process of holding individual meetings with their players. Those sessions are important because it’s a time to review the season and talk about goals for the next campaign. In other words, honest conversations in which coaches and players could make sure they were on the same page.

At times, those discussions lead to exits: Either the player is ready to move on, perhaps because of a bad fit or a search for more playing time, or a coach makes it clear that maybe it’s time to find a new home.

That timeline has been moved up because of how easy it is for players to change programs and, of course, the beginning of the name, image and likeness era nearly two years ago. It’s hard for a coach to know what he needs in the transfer portal until he knows if a key player will be out the door once the season ends.

It’s created a messy situation, and it’s clear Gard is fed up about it.

“Stuff’s going on that is, quite frankly, sickening in terms of the poaching and the tampering and the portal lined up with the NIL,” Gard said. “I won’t go into details.”

Even if all of its key players do return, there are some areas UW needs to address to make a jump next season. An offense that struggled mightily this season could use a scoring guard or wing, plus an experienced body in the frontcourt to take some pressure off center Steven Crowl. Based on the type of players the Badgers have been linked with in the portal, it’s clear Gard agrees with that assessment.

But — and this is important — his philosophy has remained consistent in terms of the type of player he’s willing to add to the roster.

“I think the fit is important,” Gard said. “Basketball has a small roster (and) I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about coaches where a roster or the locker room became really toxic because it didn’t fit together.”

The challenge for Gard will be making sure all of the pieces fit together. This next month could be busy as players depart his program — that’s not a prediction so much as the reality of keeping rosters intact these days — and others are added.

The clock leading into next season already is ticking, even before this one ends, the sad new reality in college sports.

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