The Penn State Nittany Lions played more like cubs Thursday night as the Wisconsin women’s basketball team picked up a much needed conference victory 79-52. The home win boosts the Badgers to 9-9 overall and 2-6 in the Big Ten.
“We’ve stayed resilient, we’ve stayed strong,” UW head coach Lisa Stone said. “Our defense was spectacular tonight, and that’s what we kept priding ourselves in. They really fought and clawed and that’s one [victory] ... now we have to keep building on this.”
Freshman forward Lin Zastrow followed her breakthrough performance at Ohio State with another impressive line of 16 points and six rebounds on Thursday
“Lin has stepped up the last two games,” senior guard Jolene Anderson said. “That’s just huge for our program. Our team knew that it would end up on the defensive end. It comes down to playing defense for 40 minutes and I think we did a good job at that.”
Anderson and fellow senior guard Janese Banks each added 16 points and seven boards to cap the Badger victory.
Sophomore guard Annie Crangle also scored her first points of the season on a three-pointer with 11 seconds left to celebrate her 20th birthday.
“Annie taking that shot at the end, it’s her birthday, her family flies in from California, it just seals a good feeling for our team,” Stone said.
Wisconsin, ranking last in the Big Ten in scoring defense coming in to Thursday’s game, held Penn State to just 52 points—a season low.
Banks grabbed two steals right from the tip and turned the Penn State turnovers into an assist and a layup to start a 9-2 run. Wisconsin never looked back, as the Badgers kept one step ahead of the Lions all night.
“It’s a good feeling to know that we can play at this level,” Banks said. “It’s engrained into our heads and this victory breaks the ice for us. Now we’ll focus on Sunday and come out with the same kind of defensive intensity.”
First-year Penn State head coach Coquese Washington could do nothing but look on as her Lions hardly resembled the team that defeated No. 10 Duke earlier this season.
“I thought we played awful from start to finish,” Washington said. “We didn’t get back in transition and them being able to come out and get easy buckets in transition gave them a lot of confidence and really opened things up for them.”
Penn State (4-4 Big Ten, 13-7 overall) never took away the outlet pass and the Badgers exploited the fast break, scoring 16 points off Nittany Lion turnovers and 10 points in transition.
Seven Badgers scored in the first half on 47 percent shooting. The Badgers cooled off in the second, but still finished the game shooting 43 percent.
Wisconsin also turned the ball over just five times on the night, a school and Kohl Center record.
Wisconsin will next take on Big Ten cellar dweller Northwestern Sunday at 4:30 p.m. The game will be televised live on the Big Ten Network.
