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The Daily Cardinal Est. 1892
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Brust

Sophomore Ben Brust played a big role coming off the bench for UW, scoring 12 of the team’s first 32 points Wednesday.

Men's Basketball: Badgers continue early season success

After a resounding 54 point victory against Kennesaw State Saturday—in which the Wisconsin men’s basketball team shot 15-25 from behind the arc and moved up one spot to No. 14 in the AP Poll—the Badgers looked to pick up its second regular season win against the Colgate Raiders of the Patriot League Wednesday.

The Badgers (2-0 overall) were able to pick up another easy win as they beat the Colgate Raiders (1-1) 68-41. This was Wisconsin’s 21st consecutive win at the Kohl Center and the 38th in their last 39 home games.

The Badgers came out firing in the first half once again, making seven of their first 11 three-pointers and shot 52 percent overall scoring 42 first half points. The second half was more of a struggle for the Badger offense, scoring only 26 points. The main reason for this was an over eight-minute shooting funk at the beginning of the second half in which Wisconsin missed 12 of its first 13 shots, including a 0-for-9 stretch. Head coach Bo Ryan was not concerned, chalking this up to simply missing shots.

“Sometimes shots don’t go down and that’s why you take the entity. You can’t take a minute here, five minutes there,” Ryan said. “Basketball can be that way sometimes; sometimes the shots just aren’t going.”

Despite a worse shooting percentage from the field in this game (44.3 percent), the Badgers were still effective offensively as they were dominant down low, outscoring Colgate 32-12 in the paint. They were once again able to shoot a high percentage from three, making 10 of their 23 shots behind the arc.

Leading the way for the Badgers was sophomore guard Ben Brust, who is proving to be a factor as the sixth man. After hitting four out of eight three-pointers in Saturday’s game, Brust wasted no time getting acclimated to Wednesday night’s game. He was once again a force coming off the bench, staying red-hot and making four out his first five threes and scoring 12 of the Badgers first 32 points. Although Brust was less effective on offense in the second half, he was still able to come away with 17 points for the game.

Junior center Jared Berggren was a big reason why the Badgers controlled the paint, scoring nine points and hitting the boards for seven rebounds. After a solid performance in the Badgers’ first game he backed it up in the second and could be the force in the paint that the Badgers desperately need down the road this year.

The Badgers once again played well on defense, getting deflections and filling passing lanes, which allowed them come up with 11 steals and outscore Colgate 9-0 on the fast break. Junior forward Ryan Evans was a big contributor to that with four steals of his own to go along with his seven points.

Despite the Badgers success thus far, they will have to improve their free throw shooting if they are to be an elite team this year. This is surprising as Bo Ryan’s teams are usually one of the best in the country at the charity stripe. The Badgers only made four out of 14 free throws against Colgate and have only shot 52 percent on the year at the line.

The Badgers will now shift their focus to the Wofford Terriers, who come to Madison Saturday night. Wofford is 1-1, having lost to Georgia on the road in their first game and beating Emory & Henry 70-55 at home in their next game.

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