Hawkeye Down

Iowa certainly delivered one of the lowest moments of Wisconsin's season in Iowa City, but the Badgers shot down the Hawkeyes for a measure of payback on Wednesday night. Wisconsin's upperclassmen took turns picking apart the Iowa defense, leading to an enjoyable 69-52 win.

Statistically Wisconsin led Iowa in every traditional category, including all three shooting percentage stats. The team was especially effective converting buckets after Iowa turnovers. [box score] And the best part about watching it from the comfort of my own home was that the totally worthless "stand up old people" chant by the student section was barely audible!

In the first half, the junior back court of Jason Bohannon and Trevon Hughes combined for 21 of the team's 36 points on a mercurial 8-of-13 shooting from the field (3-of-4 on treys) and five assists. Hughes finished with 6 assists, 2 steals and only 1 TO. Hard to believe, but the assist total was a career-high for Pop. Bohannon, on the other hand, has now nailed 14-of-19 (73.6%) from 3-point land in the last four games. Keep your fingers crossed for more of that.

After the halftime break, Marcus Landry came to life and Joe Krabbenhoft continued to put in a full day's work. The senior forwards totaled 16 of UW's 33 second-half points. Landry surpassed the 1,000-point plateau for his career, but it was Krabby's aggressiveness on offense that helped subdue any hopes Iowa had of pulling an upset. He finished with a team-high 16 points.

Jon Leuer looked really comfortable working the glass against Iowa's big men and grabbed eight rebounds.

Iowa seems to have uncovered a really nice player in sophomore Jake Kelly. Kelly is extremely quick with the ball; he shook Hughes on a few occasions. His 17 points were the bright spot for Todd Lickliter's crew.

Yesterday, the Wisconsin State Journal had a nice article on the progress made by the fifth upperclassmen in Bo Ryan's rotation: Kevin Gullikson. With the return of Keaton Nankivil, Gully is bound to see a decrease in minutes. However, unless his superior post entry passing ability magically transfers to someone else, Gullikson will still have a place on the floor from time to time.

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I had to chuckle at a few whistles in this game. Two of Jordan Taylor's fouls were complete and utter whiffs by the officials. The first was when one of the Hawkeyes stumbled after getting an offensive rebound and JT just happened to be in the vicinity. The second time, Taylor was playing defense on a drive but did not appear to even touch the player in question. He left the floor amazed that he had to explain himself to Greg Gard.

In Iowa's defense, when Kelly (or was it Gatens?) dove to the floor to save the ball after it was stripped by Krabbenhoft he never hit touched the end line. The referee had a different idea.

The Missing Ingredients

What a choke job from the Badgers. Wisconsin made Minnesota look like high schoolers for 33 straight minutes in the middle of Thursday's game. With about three minutes left, Tubby Smith FINALLY reapplied full court pressure and the wheels came off.

Then the Badgers looked like the high school team. The trademark defense that Wisconsin rediscovered in the first half melted away like strawberry jello. In the waning moments of the second half, Minnesota drove to the rim at will to dump in uncontested layup after uncontested layup.

Normally you would expect the team who rebounds well, takes care of the ball and scores more off of free throws to win, but the disparity in easy buckets by the end of the game was too much for UW to overcome. [box score]

Stats by StatSheet.com

On the other end, Bo Ryan's crew had no idea where to go for a key bucket. The referees stopped bailing them out. Were they gassed? Marcus Landry certainly did not have the legs to power in the available looks he got in the post. On numerous occasions, players like Landry, Trevon Hughes and Jason Bohannon failed to finish on the press break when open layups were presented to them (although I think J-Bo's was goaltended). The result was a heartbreaking 78-74 overtime loss.

Wisconsin was no better than Northwestern tonight, who also handed over a victory to a ranked opponent. So instead of continuing to blog in disbelief, I'll leave you with the story I would have written if the Badgers had held on ... you know, if Wisconsin was actually a quality team this year ...

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Poise. Movement.

Wisconsin's offense possessed both of those ingredients against #18 Minnesota for 33 straight minutes in the middle of Thursday night's game. As a result, the Badgers were able to turn a terrible start on its head, dominate the Golden Gophers and deny Minnesota its first win at the Kohl Center.

Oh, and one more thing: Defense

Most viewers were probably wondering what took Tubby Smith so long to go back to the full court pressure that made the first four minutes of the game pretty miserable for Wisconsin. Well, the Badgers were playing lock down defense for the remainder of the first half and continued doing a decent job on defense through much of the second half. Without being able to score, Minnesota could not speed up the game with a consistent press.

That brand of defense has been the element most absent from Wisconsin's game plan so far this year. If the Badgers can sustain that kind of defense (closing out on shooters, disrupting passing lanes and rebounding) for 40 minutes, UW will be a conference title contender once again. Defensive intensity, poise and good movement on offense are the three missing ingredients to a successful 2009 season.

Kevin Gullikson, of all people, opened up the offense for Bo's boys. Gullikson -- aka Captain America -- played a superb first half. He made spectacular entry passes to Landry and it was contagious. You had players cutting to the hole religiously and effortlessly, which led to easy buckets when the Badgers kept their eyes peeled.

I cannot believe Gullikson did not get more minutes actually. This is the first time I remember genuinely questioning how Keaton Nakivil's career will turn out with the Badgers. The sophomore forward is giving his team zero quality minutes right now.

Once again, Trevon Hughes shows how valueable he is to Wisconsin. Pop really toyed with the Gopher guards for the majority of the game. Except for some lapses when Minnesota reapplied a the late press, Hughes was virtually flawless in the second half. The transformation was remarkable.

But my fists were still clenched through the whole game -- with good reason. Minnesota was determined to make it a battle and frustrated many of the Badgers with pressure. Nothing new. With Jordan Taylor not yet trustworthy, the only reliable ballhandlers/decision-makers other than Hughes are Bohannon and Joe Krabbenhoft. Neither of them are quick enough to get separation from quicker players, which comes back to bite the Badgers in those situations.

Tim Jarmusz did not have a good game. To be honest, I question why he was in the game at the end against the full court pressure -- he's almost out there by default. His handle is not that good and he is not quick enough to get open either. One of those wide-open 3-pointers would have been nice Timmy.

On a brighter note, Wisconsin made 12-of-14 FTs over the last nine minutes of the second half to salt away the win. The Badgers finished 23-of-28 (83%) from the charity stripe -- a pleasant surprise.

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Finally, there were more than enough questionable calls in this game to warrant mentioning. And for the most part, I thought Wisconsin got the better end of the deal (non-Badger fans are toasting their brethren right now). And Ed Hightower wasn't even involved ... just his running mate Ted Hillary.

The calls/non-calls included:
- Paul Carter's goaltending on J-Bo's shot
- Hughes' fourth foul when he poked the ball out of Westbrook's dribble
- The whirling Westbrook drive that ended in a surprising and-1 ... I didn't see any contact there
- Damien Johnson got screwed when he cleanly blocked Pop's layup attempt in the closing minutes.
- Johnson was also called for a foul earlier when blocking Landry's jumper ... looked clean

Rewinding Wisconsin-Texas

The first thing that came to mind as I left the Kohl Center a week ago was something my friend Mike said during the game -- that Texas got its points so much easier than Wisconsin did.

While the Badgers strained to get more of their baskets, the Longhorns made things look easy. Pulling down 38 rebounds (15 offensive) to UW's 22 rebounds was the primary culprit. Of course, the silky smooth jumpers that A.J. Abrams dropped over, around and through tight Badger coverage seemed like a dream too. But the combination was a nightmare for Bo Ryan's club.

The game's flow was stilted by too many whistles from Ed Hightower. On the Wisconsin side, both Marcus Landry and Jon Leuer were saddled with foul trouble. However, Texas was just as affected, if not more. Enormous center Dexter Pittman and skilled big man Connor Atchley both sat the majority of the second half after picking up their third and fourth personal fouls, respectively. What a shame too -- I thought watching Atchley and Leuer go at each other would have been a great comparison.

Damion James picked up the slack, notching his second straight double-double (18 pts/15 rebs) against the Badgers. Gary Johnson added 16 & 8 in 33 minutes to Abrams' game-high 21 points as Texas dominated Wisconsin in the front court matchup. [box score]

No one other than Abrams impressed me from the Texas back court. Trevon Hughes was superb for the Badgers, but his 18 points, 4 rebs, 3 assts and 1 steal were not enough by itself. That stat line will always be overshadowed by Hughes' ill-fated drive for two points when Wisconsin trailed by three points on its final possession. The whole state is still shaking its collective head on that one ...

The remarkable thing really is that Wisconsin was still in the game at the end. The Badgers shot the lights out in the first half, finishing 9-of-19 behind the three-point line (compared to Texas' 3-of-16). Yet the team still trailed at the break thanks to an"alley-oop" by Texas that could have easily been offensive goaltending. Add that to Johnson's banked jumper late in the shot clock after a great defensive stand by UW and you have a game where the luck was simply on the side of Texas. The Badgers only turned the ball over once after halftime, but the game came down to free throws. Texas was unconscious, missing only one freebie the entire game (15-of-16); Wisconsin was only average (14-of-21). The result, a five-point loss as predicted, could have been reversed with a swing of a few free throws on each side.

Looking back, UW got nice games from Jason Bohannon and Hughes, but nothing from the bench, the seniors and little in the paint. Landry was a non-factor and Joe Krabbenhoft had a terrible night. His bad pass at midcourt right out of a timeout in the latter stages of the game was a huge shift in momentum at a crucial spot and was one of four Krabby turonvers in the game. Bo's Badgers can only go as far as those two seniors take them.