EVANSTON, Ill. - Wisconsin may have entered the game against Northwestern on a five-game losing streak, but the team had plenty of reason to remain optimistic about getting back on the winning track in Evanston.
Four of the Badgers' previous five losses were to ranked opponents, and three were lost by four points or less. Their last meeting with the Wildcats was a 74-45 rout in the Kohl Center in which Northwestern was held to 31.4 percent shooting and no players in double-digit stat totals.
Even walking onto the court in Welsh-Ryan Arena Saturday night, Wisconsin was welcomed by an enormous caravan of fans that rivaled - and possibly even outnumbered - Northwestern fans in the 8,100 seat venue.
In the opening minutes, Wisconsin was careful not to flounder despite Northwestern hitting four-straight three-point shots in the first 2:30. The Badgers responded with three made shots of their own from behind the arc, including two from junior guard Jason Bohannon. Fortunately for Wisconsin, the early points from Bohannon appeared to give him a certain confidence that he has been lacking in the past week. In the losses to Illinois and Purdue, Bohannon accrued a total of five points and shot 2-for-12 from the field.
It helped a lot [to hit those three pointers],"" Bohannon said. ""Our team confidence, it got down real quick when they hit a couple of threes, and that kept us in the game. We just got to keep playing and keep looking for good shots.""
Sophomore forward Jon Leuer also found himself again after a dry spell of four total points in the last two games. The second leading scorer on the team behind junior guard Trévon Hughes on Saturday night, Leuer's contributions were undoubtedly one of the reasons Wisconsin kept the game close down to the end.
But what did not help the Badgers in the long run was the poor defense they employed throughout the contest.
Wisconsin tallied 24 fouls in the game, its second highest total since beginning conference play, and allowed Northwestern to shoot 57.1 percent from the field. All five of Wisconsin's starters had four fouls by the end of the game, while the four other players who stepped on the court for them had one.
The fact that Landry got into foul trouble early and picked up his fourth personal by 8:24 in the second half was a major factor in the Badgers' inability to get any offensive activity down in the post.
""[Landry] is the one who put himself on the bench,"" head coach Bo Ryan said after the game. ""But you can't blame anybody. You have to be accountable for yourself [and] your movement away from the ball.""
In the final 4:20 of the game, the Badgers - who were holding onto a slim 50-52 lead - allowed the Wildcats to squeeze by down low in the post for three layups and fouled on the five other occasions. None of Northwestern's final eight possessions ended in a stop or a turnover, and Northwestern senior guard Craig Moore seemed impossible to stump at the free throw line.
The performance on defense is the reason why Wisconsin has dropped to sixth in the conference in scoring defense, with a meager scoring margin of plus-two in conference play - a statistic skewed drastically in a favorable direction by the blowout win against Northwestern in early January. Without question, the current defense is the worst it has ever been under head coach Bo Ryan and has been the biggest contributing factor to the current six game losing streak.
""[We need to] win basketball games,"" Bohannon said. ""We've had those six games, and we've been in all of them. And if we haven't pulled them out, that's on us. That's not on coach [Ryan] or anyone else; that's our fault. He's the one telling us the right things to do and we're just not executing to get it done. We've got to get that done to win.
