All John Blackwell needed was 12 points Wednesday to reach the 1,000 point mark in his decorated Wisconsin career. Instead, the junior put the Badgers on his back, scoring 26 points en route to a 85-73 victory over Northwestern.
Facing a 5-2 Northwestern team in their conference opener, the Badgers started the game sluggish, keeping pace with the Wildcats. However, a Nick Boyd hustle play in which he dove, kept his dribble alive and threw a lob to Nolan Winter with 16:09 remaining in the first half gave Wisconsin a major momentum boost.
Blackwell proceeded to take over from there, scoring 23 first-half points, including five 3-pointers. But his excellence didn’t come without help from his teammates. Andrew Rohde’s aggression coming off screens ignited back-to-back kick outs to Blackwell for 3, extending the lead to 15 with 9:57 remaining in the half. Rohde finished the game with a season-high nine assists.
Just over a minute later, Blackwell entered Badger royalty, scoring his 1,000th point on yet another 3-pointer. The Kohl Center crowd erupted when the milestone was announced at the following timeout. Blackwell is the 51st Badger to reach 1,000 points at Wisconsin. Coincidentally, Rohde also scored his 1,000th collegiate point minutes later.
Coming off an abysmal performance against TCU — scoring just two points on 1-for-6 shooting — Austin Rapp was demoted to the bench. While Greg Gard elected to start Bieliauskas in his place, claiming Nolan Winter fits naturally at the power forward position, Rapp responded well, scoring 13 points in 27 minutes of action, seven minutes more than Bieliauskas played.
Gard acknowledged Rapp’s success against Northwestern after the game, but didn’t sugarcoat the Australian’s early struggles, saying “Austin’s got to get better.”
After a season-high 36 points against Providence on Thanksgiving, Nick Boyd was rather invisible in the first half, scoring just two points. Still, the Badgers did not break stride, hitting nine of their 21 attempted 3-pointers and scoring 55 first-half points. The 23 point lead was due in large part to Wisconsin’s 18 points off seven Northwestern turnovers. The Badgers excelled in their ball-handling, committing zero turnovers going into the break.
But like he always does, Boyd put on a show in the second half, scoring 18 of his 20 points and keeping the Badgers afloat. Despite Wisconsin’s shooting difficulties after the break (36.6% from the field, 20% from 3), Boyd was phenomenal, constantly getting to the cup and completing acrobatic finishes.
Defensively, Wisconsin held standout forward Nick Martinelli, who averaged over 20 points per game entering the contest, to just 14 points. Cincinnati transfer Arrinten Page did give the Badgers fits with 21 points, but others did little to help him. The Wildcats shot just 21.1% from 3, their second lowest shooting performance of the season. They also turned the ball over 12 times. Wisconsin did just seven times, all coming in the second half.
Nolan Winter was the fourth Badger in double figures, scoring 12 points and adding four rebounds. Other offensive contributions were few and far between for Wisconsin. Besides Rapp, Jack Janicki was the only other bench player to score, tallying five points.
Despite a subpar second half in which the Badgers scored just 30 points, their initial explosion gave them enough cushion to come away with a vital 12 point conference victory. As Gard harped on after the game, full game “consistency” is going to be key in their upcoming matchup with Marquette.
The Golden Eagles enter Madison at 5-4 on the year, just holding off Valparaiso in overtime to get above .500. Tipoff is set for 1 p.m. at the Kohl Center on Saturday.
