Have to love Wisconsin, which was considerate enough to add some drama to a day that promised to be dull.
Why?
Here it was Saturday in its Kohl Center, where it is undefeated this season. On tap for the afternoon was Iowa, which has trouble winning outside its own zip code.
This promised to be a mismatch of the grandest proportions, except the nation’s fourth-ranked Badgers’ sense of theater kicked in. They didn’t set out merely to win this game. They decided to throw in a twist to see just how badly they could play and still succeed.
At least that is the impression they left as they remained tied with Ohio State atop the Big Ten race with a 74-62 victory over the Hawkeyes (14-11, 6-5).
The Badgers’ miscues were many.
Senior point guard Kammron Taylor was 3 of 9 from the field and committed four turnovers while handing out only a pair of assists. Their other starting guard, junior Michael Flowers, was 2 of 6 and committed five turnovers while adding just a pair of assists.
Both of them regularly drove into traffic with no place to go, which is a neophyte’s mistake, and that is why Badgers coach Bo Ryan wasn’t pleased.
“We didn’t make really good decisions with the ball,” he said. “[Iowa’s] guard play, as far as aggressiveness on defense, had something to do with it. But, as a whole, we were making bad decisions on our probes. . . . Why dribble into somebody? I thought some of our guys went bowling last night and they were the bowling ball.”
Their insistence on playing that role simply dismantled their team’s vaunted swing offense, which depends on constant motion, solid screens and crisp passes. The Badgers (24-2, 10-1) had none of that here, especially in the first half, and that left them stagnant, flat-footed, disjointed and rushing bad shots. When the first half ended, they trailed by four points.
A quick look at the play-by-play of those 20 minutes reveals just how pedestrian they were during them. Alando Tucker missed a layup with 3 minutes 1 second gone, and about four minutes later, Marcus Landry missed another. Then, 40 seconds later, Taylor missed one. Before the half ended, Landry missed another and forward Joe Krabbenhoft missed two.
The Badgers also had more turnovers (eight) than assists (seven) in this half and shot just 35.7 percent.
Their woes didn’t end until a pair of surprising catalysts yanked them out of their doldrums. The first was the 6-foot-7-inch Krabbenhoft, who was a dervish down low while grabbing five offensive rebounds and a game-high eight in just 17 minutes.
One of the former came off a Tucker miss, and he laid it home to give his team a four-point lead with 15:35 remaining. Another came two minutes later off a Flowers miss and he put it back as well to restore his team’s lead to four.
“I thought he was the difference in the game,” Hawkeyes coach Steve Alford said. “His offensive rebounds were back-breakers for us.”
So was the work of Brian Butch, whose own offensive rebound led to a Taylor three-pointer at 11:42 that gave the Badgers a 52-50 lead. This was the lead they would build on to the end, and as they did, Butch chipped in six points, two rebounds and two blocks.
“He had another good game against us,” Alford said. “For whatever reason, he likes playing against us.”
Tucker led the Badgers with 21 points, going above 2,000 for his career–second on the school’s all-time list behind Michael Finley.
Their defense contributed mightily as well, holding Hawkeyes leading scorers Adam Haluska and Tyler Smith to a combined 24 points–12.8 below their combined average–on 10-for-33 shooting. They also outrebounded Iowa by nine.
Yet, at the end, this was far from a masterpiece they had painted. It was simply an outstanding team playing just well enough to defeat one that was average.
“This is one game we just have to throw away,” Taylor said. “That’s not how we play. That game today is not typical.”
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smyslenski@tribune.com
