The No. 25 UW men's basketball team (3-1 overall) will take to the road for the second time this season when it heads east to face Rutgers (2-1) Saturday night.
Last weekend, the road proved to be a tough place to play for the Badgers. They traveled to the sunny West Coast to take on Pepperdine and left California burned 75-61.
\It's one game,"" senior guard Sharif Chambliss said. ""It's behind us, we learned from the experience, but we're ready to go out there and get a 'W', just work hard and the outcome will take care of itself.""
Rutgers comes off a loss on its own court. Wednesday night the Scarlet Knights faced Penn State and lost a close 83-80 contest.
Sophomore guard Quincy Douby's layup with 3.4 seconds left put Rutgers within striking distance of Penn State, but the Nittany Lions still had the two-point advantage and nailed a final free throw with 2.7 seconds left to seal the deal. Senior guard Ricky Shields attempted a 70-foot buzzer beater, but it was not enough for the win.
""I think Penn State must have played pretty well, because that's a tough place to go in and win,"" Badger Head Coach Bo Ryan said.
Saturday's game will mark only the third time these two teams have faced one another. The first contest came back in 1949, when the Badgers took a 68-55 victory at Iowa City, Iowa. More recently, the Scarlet Knights came into the Kohl Center last year and went back to New Jersey with a 55-43 loss. Wisconsin dominated for a majority of the game, but Rutgers made the Badgers work for the victory in the final minutes. They crept up on the Badgers, 44-38 with 4:17 remaining, but Wisconsin used a 10-2 run to close out the game.
This year, the Scarlet Knights have the capability once again to make for a close game. Their offense is fueled by solid guard corps.
Douby and Shields take control of the scoring load for Rutgers with their 20.3 and 18.3 points a piece, respectively. Against Penn State, Shields seemed to be able to do it all. He tallied a game high 21 points, grabbed nine boards, unusually high for a guard, and nailed four from beyond the three-point line. Douby also fueled the offense with his 20 points, four assists and his own four three-pointers.
""They're very good,"" Ryan said, regarding Douby and Shields. ""They can shoot from long range [and are] good with the ball-extremely athletic with the ball and with their eye-hand coordination. They've got both ends working.""
While the season is still young for Wisconsin, Ryan has made an early adjustment in his starting five. For the first two games, he had senior forward Andreas Helmigk in the lineup, but against Pepperdine he switched in senior forward Zach Morley for Helmigk. Morley, who was primarily the Badgers' sixth man last season, started against Maryland Tuesday and will most likely be in the same spot Saturday. Ryan commented Morley was dealing with a shoulder injury earlier in the season, but as far as he knows, it is doing better.
""Who knows if Zach wouldn't have been a starter from the beginning,"" Ryan said. ""There were some things that he's been dealing with and now he seems to be a lot sharper and a lot better physically playing the game. Zach's healthy and he's ready to go.""
Though the Badgers are coming off a huge 69-64 victory over No. 12 Maryland, they still understand the task at hand with Rutgers. They saw what happened last weekend during their California experience, hoping not to get bitten again by the underdogs.
""Rutgers is really intense,"" Chambliss said. ""I know coach [Gary] Waters is really an intense coach. We know we have to go in there and play our game and set the tempo.""
