Wisconsin head coach Lisa Stone had two things to celebrate Sunday afternoon as the Wisconsin women's basketball team (5-4 Big Ten, 16-6 overall) defeated Minnesota 70-57 at the Kohl Center in front of a crowd of 15,269 people. Stone donated 25 cents per fan in attendance to the Gilda's Club Madison, a nonprofit cancer foundation, for the ‘Raise the Roof' event. Stone was impressed with the crowd turnout and decided to donate a total of $4,285.50 to match a sellout crowd. This number was matched by the American Transmission Company, and Bucky's Locker Room also donated $2,000, for a grand total of over $10,000.
Junior guard Janese Banks led Wisconsin for the second consecutive game with 20 points as three other Badgers scored in double-figures. Fellow junior Jolene Anderson scored 15 points, followed by freshmen Rae Lin D'Alie and Mariah Dunham, tallying 14 and 11, respectively.
It was not until late in the first half when Wisconsin built a comfortable cushion by picking up defensive intensity, which led to several Gopher turnovers. Banks hit two 3-pointers in a row, allowing the Badgers to go up six points with 6:30 left in the first half.
From there, the run continued until they went into the locker room with a 36-19 lead, as Anderson found fire and scored all nine of her first half points in the final six minutes of action.
In the second half, Wisconsin took care of the ball as Minnesota attempted to pick up their defensive efforts. Wisconsin did not stumble, however, and finished with a school-history low of seven turnovers.
""We weathered every storm that Minnesota brought to us,"" Stone said after the game. ""[Minnesota] is a very physical basketball team and they caused us to turn the ball over quite a few times the first time we played them. We had two turnovers at the half, finished with seven and set a Kohl Center record for taking care of the basketball. That really looks to me like the story of the game.""
Minnesota's sophomore guard Emily Fox took control on the offensive side, finishing with a team-high 20 points, 16 of which came from the second half alone. Freshman Ashley Ellis-Milan finished with 14 points, but that was not enough to close in on Wisconsin's impressive lead as Minnesota dropped to 13-9 overall and 5-4 in the Big Ten.
""That's the best we played all year,"" Stone said. ""We shared the ball very well and got scoring from a lot of areas ... We held on, made some free throws and shot the ball well.""
""It was a great day,"" Stone added. ""When you have a crowd of that nature and there for a tremendous cause, a number of folks have never seen us play, and I'm hoping this will encourage them to come back.""
Three weeks ago, Wisconsin was overpowered at Minnesota and lost by a whopping 18 points. Yesterday, the Gophers were without the aid of leading-scorer senior Kelly Roysland, who suffered an injury and was unable to participate.
Thursday, the Badgers will be packing their bags and heading to Indiana in hopes of picking up another road victory.
