More than 39 minutes into the Wisconsin Badgers’ 63-57 overtime loss to the San Diego State Aztecs, the Badgers were in a nearly identical situation as they were in their 54-52 win over Delaware two days earlier.
With 4.9 seconds left in a tie game, the Badgers possessed the basketball, looking to cap off their road trip to San Diego with two last-second wins. But in the final possession of regulation, Tessa Cichy turned the ball over while attacking the basket and the Badgers limped into overtime.
In both the final minutes of regulation as well as overtime, the Badgers looked fatigued. Their offense became stagnant and they attempted to force passes into nonexistent windows. Not surprisingly the Badgers got outscored 12-6 in the extra session.
Wisconsin held the Aztecs to only three points in the second quarter, but led by only seven points at halftime. After extending the lead to 11 points with seven minutes remaining in the third quarter, the Badgers looked burnt out from the California sun, and a mere 10 minutes later trailed by five points.
Turnovers again plagued the Badgers. After limiting its turnovers Friday, UW had twice as many turnovers (20) as the Aztecs (10).
Earlier in the week, head coach Bobbie Kelsey said she would turn to “pine time,” in hopes of her team waking up, and limiting her team’s turnovers. Sunday she followed through, resorting to “pine time” to send a message.
Cichy played a mere 27 minutes due to her five turnovers and struggled finding any semblance of an offensive rhythm, failing to score until the final minute of regulation. Cichy turned the ball over less than two minutes into the second half, and found herself on the bench sitting next to senior point guard Dakota Whyte. Whyte lost her starting spot due to turnover problems in Friday’s win against Delaware, but missed Sunday’s game with an illness. That forced redshirt freshman Roichelle Marble to be the Badgers’ primary ball-handler. Marble finished the game with 13 points in a career-high 34 minutes, but her minus 34 plus/minus is indicative of some of the struggles the Badgers faced while she was on the floor.
For instance, on the Badgers’ first possession of overtime, Marble tried a spin move in her attempt to create space, but turned the ball over leading to an Aztec basket. The Badgers never recovered.
Senior guard Nicole Bauman, though, recovered from her early season slump and finished the game with 24 huge points. Bauman seemed to single-handedly carry the Badgers’ offense in the fourth quarter thanks to a flurry of 3-pointers.
The Badgers as a team shot 52.4 percent from three and looked more like the team that led the Big Ten in 3-point percentage last season than the dreadful shooting team that took the floor in its first four games.
