The Wisconsin women's basketball team fell short at Iowa Sunday afternoon, losing their final game of the regular season and Big Ten play 103-93. With the loss, the Badgers (7-9 Big Ten, 18-11) fell into a four-way tie for fifth place in conference standings going into the Big Ten tournament, earning themselves the No. 7 seed.
Junior guard Jolene Anderson, however, was crowned the Big Ten scoring champion for the season, finishing just one point ahead of Ohio State's Jessica Davenport. Anderson is the first player in program history to accomplish the feat, finishing with a game-high 26 points.
Three other Wisconsin players reached double figure scoring as freshman guard Mariah Dunham posted a career-high 25 points, freshman point guard Rae Lin D'Alie netted 14 and junior guard Janese Banks contributed 12 tallies. Banks also reached a milestone in her career in the first half, as she became only the 19th player in Badger history to score 1,000 points.
Sophomore forward Wendy Ausdomore of Iowa went 6-of-8 from beyond the 3-point arc and made all six of her shots from the charity stripe, finishing with 24 points. Sophomore guard Kristi Smith also ended with 24 points as she went an impressive 6-of-9 from the field and 11-of-13 from the free throw line. The Hawkeyes improved to 6-10 in the Big Ten and 14-15 overall with the win.
Both teams shot respectably from the field, as the Badgers went 30-of-64 from the field for 48.4 percent and the Hawkeyes went 32-of-60 for a percentage of 53.3. The rebounding difference between the two teams was also very close, but Wisconsin finished five ahead of Iowa with 35 total rebounds.
Fouls also were a major factor in the game, as the teams combined for 52 personal fouls (29 by Wisconsin and 23 by Iowa.) Both teams shot well from the charity stripe as Wisconsin went 29-of-34 (85.3 percent) and Iowa shot 31-of-38 (81.6 percent.)
""Ultimately that was the way we practiced,"" Wisconsin head coach Lisa Stone said after the game on her team's defense. ""We didn't have very much defensive energy in practice this week. It was a long week to prepare for a team. We gave Iowa way too much early confidence and in the second half they just kept scoring and getting to the free throw line. It was a lack of intensity on defense.""
At the end of the first half, Wisconsin trailed Iowa by only eight points. It was close until Iowa pulled ahead by 16 points with approximately seven minutes left in the game, a margin which Wisconsin could not come back from.
""Obviously we didn't finish the way we wanted to,"" Stone said. ""We can't let this be the ending. We have to cure some things up and granted, now we are going to play earlier [in the Big Ten tournament] than we wanted to.""
The Big Ten tournament will tip off Thursday afternoon in Indianapolis at the Conseco Fieldhouse, as Wisconsin challenges No. 10-seed Michigan, in hopes of moving on to play the No. 2 seed Purdue Friday in the quarterfinals.
—uwbadgers.com
contributed to this report.
