Philadelphia—Arizona head coach Lute Olson called it his team's best offensive performance all year. ESPN analyst Dick Vitale would later call it the biggest disappointment of all of Friday's games. Call it what you will, but the Badgers' 94-75 loss to the Wildcats in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia Friday meant the end of their season.Wildcat senior guard Hassan Adams, who played in his first game after being suspended for a DUI, scored 21 points, and junior guard Mustafa Shakur pitched in with 18 points and nine assists, as Wisconsin dropped its fourth-straight game to end the season and failed to pick up its 20th win for the first time since the 2000-'01 season.
UW was never able to recover from an 8-0 Wildcat run to start the game. A turnover by sophomore guard Michael Flowers, just over 11 minutes into the game and a lay-up by senior guard Chris Rodgers gave the Wildcats a 24-point lead, 35-11, their biggest of the game.
The thing that we didn't want to have happen, happened,\ said UW head coach Bo Ryan, who continued his streak of never winning a game when he is the lower seed in the NCAA tournament. ""You can't play from behind. It's very difficult.""
""Their confidence was very high. That's what comes out of an 8-0 run,"" senior forward Ray Nixon said, who played his final game as a Badger. ""We knew we weren't out of it. There's 40 minutes of basketball. We fought very hard. They just knocked down more shots and played a little bit harder than we played today.""
Junior forward Alando Tucker finished with a team-high 19 points on 5-of-15 shooting, and 8-of-14 from the free throw line. However, he hit his first field goal of the game with more than two minutes remaining in the first half, finishing the period with three points on 1-of-6 shooting.
""We knew we had our hands full with Tucker and we just wanted to make it very difficult for him,"" Olson said, ""even if it cost us a bucket from one of their big guys.""
""I knew I had to play well the second half,"" Tucker said. ""It was frustrating to let those guys get easy baskets. I think that really helped their confidence, even on the defensive end.""
The Badgers fought back at the end of the first half. After Rodgers' steal and lay-up, Wisconsin proceeded to go on a 23-11 run, capped by a hook shot by junior center Jason Chappell, to cut the lead in half and make it a 46-34 game at the end of the first frame.
But the momentum would turn to the Wildcats again right out of the gate as they opened the second half with a 7-0 run to push the lead back up to 19.
The 46 points put up by Arizona in the first half tied a season high, when they put up the same number against Stanford in the middle of January.
""We are not athletic or quick enough to play from behind. The players know it, the coaching staff knows it,"" Ryan said. ""We didn't stop playing because we got behind, but that was our worst nightmare.""
Junior guard Kammron Taylor echoed his coach's sentiments.
""We don't have that depth that we did in the beginning of the season,"" said Taylor, who finished with 12 points, good enough for second on the team. ""They jumped on us and it's hard to come from behind. You're usually not going to do that against a team like Arizona.""
Sophomore forward Brian Butch, who was plagued with foul trouble all game, finished with six points and only one rebound in 19 minutes of play. Nixon led the team with five boards. Though the Badgers only lost by nine in the rebounding battle, 36-27, they dug themselves a deep hole early, giving up key offensive rebounds to Arizona forwards Marcus Williams, Ivan Radenovic and Bret Brielmaier.
""Maybe they were more physical than us or whatever or maybe the ball didn't bounce our way,"" Chappell said. ""It's just something we gotta look at on tape and see what happened.""
The 94 points the Badgers gave up were the most they surrendered all year, beating out the 91 they allowed in a three-point loss at Wake Forest early in the season.
Nixon, whose teammates appeared distraught in the locker room afterward, admitted it was difficult to end his Badger career on the wrong side of a blowout but took solace in the fact that his team put forth a valiant effort.
""It is very tough, but I'm proud of my team and my coaching staff. We worked hard all year. The end of the season didn't turn out the way we wanted it to, but we gave it our all,"" Nixon said. ""We didn't leave anything on the floor and hopefully these guys come out here and do a better job next year.""
\
