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Tate: Climb back to the top a slow one

With Tom Izzo's marauding Michigan State Spartans on the horizon Monday, Brad Underwood faces a Humpty Dumpty task that will take considerably more than "all the king's horses and all the king's men."

What has been a competitive, though failed, Illini basketball operation throughout the previous month and a half ran off the rails Friday. It splintered and unraveled against Wisconsin's patient dissecting.

Underwood cited a "lack of energy." My perspective is different. What I saw were Wisconsin players drawing inspiration from a multi-decade winning culture, and a star player (Ethan Happ) using deft footwork in a disciplined system that used dribble penetration and swing passes to destroy weak UI defensive rotations.