The UW men's basketball team used an early second-half offensive explosion to pull away and beat Northwestern (1-8 Big Ten, 11-11 overall) 69-52 Saturday at the Kohl Center.
Junior center Brian Butch started the second half off with a thunderous dunk and the Badgers (8-1, 22-2) went on to score 29 points over the next 12 minutes to take a 24-point lead. UW held a 33-19 lead at halftime, but the run put them up 62-38.
Wisconsin hit four 3-pointers in that stretch and seven in the game.
""It's just a matter of them going down,"" sasenior guard Kammron Taylor, who hit three 3-pointers in the game, said. ""We just have to stay confident that they are going to go down, and our last two games our shots have been falling.""
Oddly, after going up by 24 with 8:53 remaining, Wisconsin hit only one field goal the rest of the game, allowing Northwestern to close the gap. Still, the Badgers only committed five fouls the entire game and Northwestern only attempted two free throws, making it tough to stage a comeback.
""That was one of the stats where I saw it and was like, ‘Wow,'"" senior forward Alando Tucker said of the five Wisconsin fouls. ""But with the type of things that Northwestern does, they don't really set us up to foul.""
On the other end, UW shot 20 free throws and converted 16 of them.
""That's what it takes in all our drills in order to finish our free throw shooting—it's 80 [percent] or better,"" head coach Bo Ryan said. ""It's what we strive for. You don't always get there, but it's a long season.""
Northwestern head coach Bill Carmody seemed somewhat surprised by UW's hot free throw shooting.
""In the first half they made like 13 foul shots. When did Tucker start making foul shots anyway?"" Carmody joked.
The Phoenix Phenom
While Northwestern lost its eighth Big Ten game of the season, NU freshman forward Kevin Coble played brilliantly while scoring a game-high 24 points.
The Phoenix native caught fire in the second half, scoring 17 points on 7-of-10 shooting.
""He's a good offensive player,"" Carmody said. ""Even in the first half I liked the way he was playing. He was aggressive, he missed a few ... but he was feeling good and in the second half he was pretty good.""
Coble had a stretch in which he hit four straight shots, and after missing a 3-pointer, he came back with three more straight buckets. His scoring sparked a 14-0 run that brought Northwestern within 10 points with 3:20 remaining. That is as close as the Wildcats would get.
""[Coble] put himself in a position in two stretches,"" Ryan said. ""If you look at those 10 field goals I think there are two groupings in there where he caught fire. He's a good shooter and he understands the offense very well. He took advantage of his opportunities.""
Coble was out with an injury when Wisconsin squeaked by with a 56-50 victory at Northwestern Jan. 13.
Tucker said Coble forced Wisconsin to play a little differently this time around.
""Coble is more aggressive offensively—he's their best player,"" Tucker said. ""Sometimes when you play a player like that you have to go small. He forced us to go small tonight.""
Coble is complemented by fellow freshman Jeff Ryan who had 18 points against Wisconsin in January, but only scored six at the Kohl Center.
Bucky is hungry
Saturday's performance showed UW has a short memory as the Badgers put their first conference loss behind them before taking the court against Northwestern.
Wisconsin fell to 71-66 to Indiana last Wednesday on the road.
""That's a key loss for us right now early in the second half of the Big Ten and it relit our fire,"" Tucker said. ""Now we got that loss and we don't want to lose again. Now we got that hunger back.""
UW will now turn its attention to another mid-week road trip as the team travels to Penn State Wednesday to take on the Nittany Lions (1-7, 10-10).
