Always taking charge for UW
Leuzinger has gone from walk-on to starter
MADISON – The play was one of the hundreds of snap judgments made during a basketball game.
Rutgers was trying dig out of a 12point halftime deficit when it put Wisconsin’s Ronnie Porter and Serah Williams in a pick-and-roll. When Williams stepped up to stop the ball, the player she was defending cut to the hoop, took a pass and was about to score a layup when Natalie Leuzinger came to the rescue.
The senior guard positioned herself just outside the restricted area just before Rutgers’ Kassondra Brown went up for the layup and crashed into her.
After the whistle blew, Leuzinger, being helped to her feet by her teammates, pointed toward the Badgers’ basket. She didn’t have to wait for the official’s signal. She knew she got another one.
“I was just in the right position,” she said.
Charges aren’t a statistic kept by the Big Ten, but if they were Leuzinger probably would be among the league leaders. Taking a charge has become her signature, one of the ways the Monroe native who played at Black Hawk High School rose from the rank of walkon to valuable member of the rotation.
The 5-foot-8 guard has started 23 of 26 games this season and is fifth on the team in minutes played (28.9 mpg). Her very unofficial average for charges taken is about one per game.
“I don’t know if there is a school for taking charges,” Wisconsin coach Marisa Moseley said, “but she’d probably be an excellent professor there.”
Leuzinger averages seven points, 2.8 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game for the Badgers, a vital performer for a team trying to climb the ranks of the Big Ten.
UW (13-13, 6-10 Big Ten) has already improved its overall win total under Moseley for the third straight season and is one victory away from doing the same for its Big Ten total. The team’s next chance to reach that mark came Thursday at Maryland.
Leuzinger does a lot of the things that don’t grab headlines, making her biggest impact as a defender capable of working against guards or post players and making hustle plays while blossoming as a three-point shooter.
“It hasn’t been easy being a walk-on, but I think everyone knows that I’m a hard worker and I’ll do whatever it takes to help this team,” she said. “And in the end my dreams are really becoming a reality, so in the end it works out.”
Leuzinger’s days as a charge artist go back to high school. It started with dog tags her coach would give players following games. Players could earn one for diving on the most loose balls or for providing the most energy or giving out the most high fives. They also could get one for most charges.
The habit carried over to college where long before Leuzinger took charges during games she did so in practice. The skill is part basketball IQ and part toughness.
“You’re going to put yourself in between someone and the basket and that can change the momentum or the tide of the game,” Moseley said. “For Nat, I think she understands the positioning that is necessary for that and anticipates when people are coming. I think she invites that. She wants that opportunity. She knows how emotionally the game can change when you take a charge.”
On the charge Leuzinger took against Rutgers, she understood the player she was defending, Antonia Bates, was more of a driver than a shooter, so she stayed in the lane and set up for the charge rather than chase Bates to the corner.
That’s the easy part. Taking the charge can be the painful part, though a pro like Leuzinger knows how to handle the blow.
“Right before they hit me I kind of absorb the contact. I know how to fall,” Leuzinger said. “It is a little scarier going up against bigger players especially like post players because they are a lot taller, stronger and heavier than me, so there is a risk when I take a charge against them. But this year so far so good. Not one of them has been painful yet.”
When you’re a rebuilding program as Wisconsin is, you need players to play above expectations to climb the ranks. Leuzinger has done that.
She helped Black Hawk reach the state tournament three times and was a four-time all-state selection by the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association, but she only played one season of club ball. The Division II offers that came her way didn’t excite her.
Instead, she enrolled in Wisconsin without the intention of playing basketball. A call from her club to then-UW coach Jonathan Tsipis got the ball got rolling toward an invitation to join the program as a preferred walk-on.
Leuzinger was placed on scholarship before last season, when she first cracked the rotation and averaged 1.3 points, 1.2 rebounds and 9.7 minutes per game.
This year she has established career highs in every statistical category. Sunday versus Purdue she scored a careerhigh 18 points and went 4 for 5 from three-point range.
And of course, she took a charge. “I’m just writing my own story. … I’m still hungry for more,” she said. “The season is not done yet. We’ve made some huge steps going forward in this season we’ve still got some games left and I’m excited at what we can do to finish off this season.”