Sam Dekker is On Fire

Dekker extended his streak of double-digit scoring games to five with an ultra-efficient performance against Nebraska last night. He scored 19 points on just six shots and also dished out four assists, including a couple of spectacular ones. All told, he had an outstanding offensive rating of 199, which roughly translated means the Badgers scored 2 points on every offensive possession that he did something.

This leads me to another streak that Dekker now has going: four straight games with an offensive rating over 150, which is pretty incredible. I don't have access to game-by-game O-rating data prior to this year, but my guess is that no Badger has had this kind of streak in conference play since Jordan Taylor's magical run in 2010-11. Certainly no one else has come close to this level of consistent efficiency this year. Here are all this years' 150+ O-ratings against top-200 kenpom teams (minimum 15 minutes played and 5 field goals attempted):

1.    Dekker, Neb., 199
2.    Dekker, Ill., 194
3.    Dekker, @NW, 183
4.    Marshall, @Ia, 178
5.    Dekker, OSU, 166
6.    Berggren, @NW, 156
7.    Bruesewitz, PSU, 156
8.    Berggren, Cal, 155
9.    Brust, Neb., 154
10.  Dekker, @MN, 153
11.  Kaminsky, @Ill., 151
12.  Brueswitz, @OSU, 151
13.  Berggren, OSU, 150

As you can see, Dekker has five of these 13 performances, including one in each of the last four games, the three best, and four of the top five. He's really good, and he is on fire right now.

Another thing to note about that list is that only one of those performances came in the non-conference portion of the schedule. This is partly because the Badgers played six games against sub-200 teams; but a bigger factor is that the Badgers played pretty poorly on offense against most of their decent competition prior to conference play. In other words, they seem to be getting better.