Is NCAA Tournament success overrated?

The headline is sure to cause angst among Wisconsin Badgers fans. But hear me out.

Wisconsin basketball’s 2023-24 season came to a crashing end with a 72-61 NCAA Tournament first-round loss to No. 12-seed James Madison. The loss ensured the program’s Sweet Sixteen drought would extend to seven years, and cast a dark cloud on an otherwise successful season.

Did the year have ups and big downs, and end in disappointment? Absolutely. But the program missed the NCAA Tournament entirely in 2022-23, made clear improvements in 2023-24 including the addition of St. John’s transfer guard A.J. Storr and now looks poised for a big 2024-25.

Related: If Wisconsin decides to move on from Greg Gard, who could it target as its next head coach?

This is not making excuses for an inexplicable no-show loss against James Madison, but it’s pointing out the fact that the program is not falling apart — contrary to some of the public sentiment.

That brings us to the general question: is NCAA Tournament success overrated when evaluating the health of a program? I’d argue it is.

The argument isn’t that NCAA Tournament success doesn’t matter, it clearly does. But more so is it overrated in the minds of college basketball fans.

For something to be overrated that means the public must put a disproportionate amount of importance on it. I think that’s the case here, as the sentence ‘Wisconsin hasn’t made the Sweet Sixteen since 2016-17‘ is uttered in every anti-Greg Gard discussion.

First, that sentence completely misses the context surrounding the drought.

The “fact” that the Badgers have not made the S16 in 7 years is such a BS copout. 1. Making the S16 is fricking hard. 2. Tourney was cancelled in a year the Badgers projected to a high seed. 3. They lost Hepburn one year.

— Badgermaniac (@THEbadgermaniac) March 25, 2024

Wisconsin’s best shot at a deep run was 2020, when the tournament was canceled. The program’s next-best look was 2022 when Johnny Davis and Chucky Hepburn suffered injuries at the worst possible time. Then it played the future national champion in Baylor in 2021, lost to an over-seeded Oregon team in 2019 and was somewhat screwed out of an NCAA Tournament birth in 2022-23 after playing one of the nation’s toughest schedules.

These are not all excuses, it’s just outlining the facts of the last seven years of disappointment. It’s also not letting Greg Gard off the hook — he’ll enter 2024-25 firmly on the hot seat and needing…