It may come as a shock to some that the UW men's basketball team is 18-1 and ranked No. 2 in the nation, as winter break and a Capital One Bowl victory overshadowed the Badgers' accomplishments. While you may have missed the action over break, The Daily Cardinal has been right there with perhaps the best basketball team in Wisconsin history:
12/16—UW 89,
Pittsburgh 75
Finals week is not the ideal time to have the No. 2 team in the nation come to town, but it did not bother senior forward Alando Tucker or junior center Brian Butch. Tucker took over the National Player of the Year picture with a 32-point, 10-rebound performance but was slightly overshadowed by the coming-out party of Butch, who shined with 27 points and 11 rebounds of his own.
12/23—UW 83, Pacific 47
As students left town for the holidays, UW was busy putting up its second major blowout of the season. Senior guard Kammron Taylor led all scorers with 17 points, but it was sophomore forwards Joe Krabbenhoft and Marcus Landry who took advantage with the big lead. Krabbenhoft notched 11 points in 21 minutes, while Landry went 3-for-3 with nine points.
12/27—UW 98,
Gardner Webb 40
If Pacific was not a nice enough Christmas present, then the holiday bonus was Gardner Webb coming to the Kohl Center. This one was over early, and Butch led the Badgers with 17 points in only 21 minutes.
12/31—UW 64, Georgia 54
One of the more important wins of the season came while most Badger fans were preparing for the Capital One Bowl. Some fans stopped in Athens, Ga., on the way down to Orlando, Fla., for the bowl game, but those who went straight to Florida packed Orlando bars New Years Eve for the game. Playing on the road in Georgia was not easy, but Tucker and Taylor did enough to pull out the win. Tucker looked unstoppable with 29 points and Taylor finished with 14.
1/6—UW 68, Minnesota 45
While Tucker has put up a highlight reel of dunks this season, it was junior guard Michael Flowers who had the dunk of the season to spark UW in this one. Down early, Flowers stole the ball and found himself one-on-one with Minnesota center Jonathan Williams. The fearless junior ignored the height differential and decided to go up for a dunk, which he converted despite being intentionally fouled on the play. Ultimately, the play turned a 13-8 deficit into a convincing win to open the Big Ten season.
Quotable: ""Me and Mike [Flowers] got this little thing going to see who can have the most dunks and his dunk is probably worth two or three dunks,"" Taylor said a week later.
1/9—UW 72, Ohio State 69
In the biggest home game since No. 1 Illinois came to Madison in 2005, the Badgers topped the No. 5 Buckeyes to improve to 16-1 and 2-0 in the Big Ten. Taylor had a breakout game with 25 points, but it was the defense of senior forward Jason Chappell and Landry that shut down touted freshman Greg Oden. Oden only had 10 points and rarely had opportunities to score. Landry also knocked down two big threes and finished with 10 points of his own. Wisconsin overcame a subpar effort from Tucker, but the senior still finished with 17 points and six rebounds.
Quotable: ""Don't tell Kam [Taylor] I said this, but he was like 2-for-25 in the last two days of practice,"" head coach Bo Ryan said. ""Five for 8? I like that. He struggled a little bit in practice. And he didn't do one of those, ‘Practice?'""
1/13—UW 56, Wildcats 50
EVANSTON, Ill.—Bad things usually happen when the Badgers visit Welsh-Ryan arena, but this time UW escaped with a narrow victory to keep the Wildcats winless in the Big Ten. Flowers struggled with foul trouble the entire game and Tucker and Taylor were held to a combined three points in the first half. Wisconsin still held a 24-18 lead in the first half with 1:14 remaining but gave up nine unanswered points to NU as the Wildcats took a 26-24 lead into the locker room.
""How do our guys ... do what we did in those last couple minutes [of the first half]? That's pretty rare,"" Ryan said. ""But give credit to Northwestern. They jumped some passing lanes. They did some things. We didn't make the ball fakes and yet we didn't get down—we got down on the scoreboard—we didn't get down. We came back and fought that off.""
Tucker rebounded to finish with 17 points and provide a big enough lift to give the 4,000-plus Badger fans in attendance something to cheer about. A huge second-half dunk turned the place into a much smaller Kohl Center and Wisconsin sputtered to its first road Big Ten victory.
Quotable: ""Make better decisions with the ball. My mom could have left me a cell phone message and told me that. Take care of the ball,"" Ryan said after the game as to what the Badgers had to do better in the second half.
1/17—UW 69, Purdue 64
The offensive struggles unfortunately followed Wisconsin back to the Kohl Center, but UW found scoring in other places to hold off the Boilermakers (2-3 Big Ten, 13-6 overall). Purdue chose to shut down Taylor and Tucker, leaving open shots for Chappell who came up with 13 big points on 4-of-6 shooting. The Boilermakers were the fourth consecutive Big Ten team to leave Chappell open on the perimeter and the senior knocked down two of the Badgers' three 3-pointers on the night.
""I felt we had to take a couple of risks in our game plan if we were going to have a chance to beat Wisconsin on their home floor,"" Purdue head coach Matt Painter said. ""One of the risks was not guarding a couple of people... Jason Chappell stepped up and made two huge threes which I thought was a big changing point in the game.""
Overall, Wisconsin is 8-0 since fall classes ended, but is not playing their best basketball. Still ranked No. 2 in the country, the Badgers are the only team in the nation to beat two top-five teams this season. Still, Big Ten teams have found a way to contain Tucker and as of press time, the Badgers still face seven road games, including a showdown at Illinois on Saturday. Complete coverage of the game can be found in Tuesday's issue of The Daily Cardinal.
