Love Northwestern coach Bill Carmody. Love his engaging manner, his droll sense of humor and his knowledge of his sport, which he honors by the style he teaches.
Still, a chuckle coursed through me Tuesday morning when I came to part of his comment on that night’s meeting between No. 3 Wisconsin and No. 5 Ohio State.
“I don’t think if you win or lose it’s significant,” he said, which led to a headline that caused me to chuckle once again:
“Just an appetizer.”
That headline made me want to scream out, “No! A thousand times no!”
Michigan State at Indiana, Penn State at Purdue and Illinois at Michigan were the appetizers, those bite-sized weenie-wraps that whetted the appetite for the sizzling entree that dominated the menu early in this Big Ten season.
As Carmody implied, the result would have little effect come March. Both Ohio State and Wisconsin are going to the NCAA tournament no matter what.
But the Badgers’ 72-69 victory over the Buckeyes, behind 25 points and six rebounds by Kammron Taylor and 17 points and six rebounds from Alando Tucker, surely will have some impact.
They are clearly the best two teams in the conference and two among the very best in the country. Fans can now measure them by their performances against each other.
The Badgers (16-1, 2-0) are off to their fastest start since 1916, are ranked higher than any other time in their history and are led by player of the year candidate Tucker. On Tuesday they seemed safe in their cozy Kohl Center, where they had lost just two of their 41 league home games in their five-plus years under Bo Ryan.
The Buckeyes, in turn, are the much-hyped cover boys, are their league’s defending regular-season champs, are the possessors of a famed freshmen class and were seeking their first meaningful victory on the road, having lost to Florida and North Carolina.
Clearly, then, the game was something more than a tray full of chips and salsa. Wisconsin and Ohio State proved that by offering up a bit of drama that was taut and intriguing until the Badgers ran off 14 straight points in the middle of the second half. Even so, though, they had to hang on dearly for a three-point victory, which they earned by holding 7-foot Buckeyes freshman center Greg Oden to just 10 points.
The plot lines were thick as an Irish brogue when this one opened, but center stage surely belonged to Tucker and Oden.
The Badgers forward, who still identifies with comic book super-heroes, cherishes games like these and often treats them as playthings, averaging better numbers against the last 11 ranked opponents he has faced (23.5 points) than he has on his career (16.0).
But many of them came on slashes to the basket as he ran into the daunting Oden a defensive neutralizer and accomplished shot-blocker.
Oden has intimidated many who have confronted him in his young career, yet that didn’t happen against Tucker and the veteran Badgers.
So this one evolved instead into that unique hybrid, a chess match between a pair of heavyweights that resulted in countless feints and jabs, in endless ploys and banging bodies.
The first move was made by the Buckeyes, who opened in a 2-3 zone that effectively clogged those lanes Tucker often takes to the hole. The Badgers countered by fronting Oden with 6-10 Jason Chappell, which effectively turned the opening minutes into a literal rain of three-pointers.
The Buckeyes depend on threes to loosen it up for their center and Tuesday night they took their first six, and 10 of their first 14 shots, from beyond the arc.
Oden, in fact, would not get his first shot until more than 10 minutes were gone, but still he got a trio of Badger big men in foul trouble.
Now it was their turn to respond and they did it with Chappell, who averages less than three shots a game.
In just longer than a minute, he took three and, on the last, Oden picked up his second foul and went to the bench for the rest of the half with 7 minutes 46 seconds still remaining.
The Buckeyes also would shoot only 28.1 percent for that half, which were reasons enough for them to be pleased they were down only three. But the Badgers had yet to get much from Tucker, who was a mere 3 of 10.
———-
smyslenski@tribune.com
