Badger Basketball opened its 2026-27 regular season Monday against Denver at the Kohl Center, a first test that arrived with both a long home-opening streak and a familiar opponent history hanging over it. Tipoff was set for 6:30 p.m., with the game streamed on B1G+ and carried on the Badger Radio Network.
The timing mattered because Wisconsin had won 10 straight home openers and 27 of its last 28 before facing Denver, so the opener came with a standard of performance already in place. The Badgers also had a recent tune-up behind them after beating Oklahoma State 82-65 in their final exhibition, a game that showed what this group can do when the shots fall: Owen Foxwell scored 19 points, 16 before halftime, and Eian Elmer added 11 with three three-pointers.
That exhibition mattered for more than the margin. Wisconsin made 18 three-pointers and shot 43.9% from deep against Oklahoma State, numbers that sit well above the team’s normal early-season output. Last season, the Badgers averaged 11.7 made three-pointers per game and finished with 409, the most in Big Ten history and fourth-best in the country. When a team opens a season by nearly matching that kind of volume in one night, it suggests the offense can stretch opponents in ways that are hard to ignore.
Denver was a logical opening opponent for another reason: Wisconsin had already beaten the Pioneers twice and entered Monday 2-0 in the series, with wins in 1953 and 1988. Austin Rapp was the only Wisconsin player with game experience against Denver, and he brought that from Portland after scoring 20 points in a win over Denver in 2024. On the other side, Denver head coach Tim Bergstraser and assistant Kyle Heikkinen both had ties to UW River Falls and UW Whitewater, adding a small layer of familiarity to a matchup built mostly on old results and new rosters.
Nolan Winter was part of why Monday carried extra attention. He was named Friday to the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Center of the Year Preseason Watch List and earlier this month made the Preseason All-Big Ten Team after averaging 13.1 points and 8.5 rebounds last season. Wisconsin also had reason to trust him in an opener like this one: he posted 17 points and 12 rebounds in last season’s season-opening win over Campbell. If the Badgers are going to keep turning home openers into routine wins, Winter is one of the players most likely to decide whether this one feels like another step forward or the first warning that the season will ask more of them than the exhibition did.
