“We don't want to think about what’s happened in the past. It’s a clean slate.” As sophomore forward Max Zimmer alluded to earlier this week, Friday marks the start of essentially a new season for Wisconsin.
NEW YORK — With a split bottom lip, junior forward Khalil Iverson made what might have been the most important defensive play of Wisconsin’s season.
NEW YORK — For the sixth game in a row, as Brad Davison jogged out of the locker room onto the court, he left behind a message in all caps on the team’s whiteboard: “BE SPECIAL.” And while for the majority of the game, highlight moments were few and far between, down the stretch Thursday afternoon, the No. 9 seed Badgers (8-11 Big Ten, 15-17 overall) got special contributions from several players as they survived No. 8 seed Maryland 59-54 to advance to the quarterfinals of the Big Ten Tournament. Though UW led for the overwhelming majority of the game, it could never quite piece together enough consecutive plays to separate from the Terrapins.
NEW YORK — When junior forward Khalil Iverson was fouled with less than one second to play and Wisconsin (8-11 Big Ten, 15-17 overall) leading by five points, freshman guard Brad Davison’s hands shot to the sky in excitement.
NEW YORK — The Wisconsin locker room seemed dejected as players enteredand drooped down in their black fold-up chairs.
After a hard-fought close game, 13-seed Wisconsin (2-15 Big Ten, 9-21 overall) fell to 12-seed Northwestern (5-12, 12-19) by a score of 63-68 on Wednesday afternoon.
Around the end of the first semester, while rolling up a burrito, sophomore Abby Laszewski responded to an impromptu media request.
As the Big Ten’s regular season came to a conclusion on Sunday, the conference tournament became the immediate focus for all of its teams.
The Wisconsin women’s basketball team (2-14 Big Ten, 9-20 overall) was awarded the No. 13 seed as it prepares to kick off Big Ten Tournament play on Wednesday against No.12 seed Northwestern (4-12 Big Ten, 11-19 overall) at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, In. UW sits 12-24 all time in the Big Ten Tournament with its best years being 2002, 2009 and 2010 when it advanced to the semifinals.
Two weeks ago at Wisconsin’s last home game of the season against Rutgers, UW recognized its senior players, guard Cayla McMorris, forward Kendall Shaw as well as Malayna Johnson, who due to injuries, was unable to compete this season.
Lilly Kuske sits on her bed with her head buried in her hands. She’s not an emotional person, but tonight the tears won’t stop.
With an at-large berth to the NCAA tournament out of the picture, and little chance of capturing home-ice advantage for the first round of the Big Ten tournament, Wisconsin’s men’s hockey team entered Columbus for its final series of the regular season looking to recapture some momentum after a deflating home finale. After a pair of four-goal beatdowns at the hands of No. 6 Ohio State (14-8-2 Big Ten, 21-8-5 overall), the Badgers (14-17-4, 8-13-3) have acquired plenty of momentum — that of a stone dropped from a cliff, rather than a team surging into the postseason. Wisconsin started the weekend off strong, and took it to the heavily-favored Buckeyes for the first 40 minutes of Friday’s game.
As the Wisconsin men’s tennis team (6-6 overall, 0-1 Big Ten) reached the halfway point of the spring season, this weekend produced a familiar set of results.
Wisconsin softball (7-7) had an up-and-down weekend at the Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic in Palm Springs, Calif, going 3-3 against a tough slate of opponents.
In their final non-conference showdown, the Wisconsin Badgers (6-6) fell to James Madison, 4-3. The match concluded UW’s road trip to Virginia, and was played in a neutral setting at Virginia Tech. The Badgers found themselves down early, losing the doubles point.
"We'd rather beat them next week, anyways." That was the message Brad Davison gave to his teammates after the Wisconsin Badgers’ (7-11 Big Ten, 14-17 overall) 68-63 loss to No. 2 Michigan State (16-2, 28-3) on Senior Day Sunday afternoon. In the team’s final game of the regular season, Davison exploded for a career-high 30 points, the most by a Wisconsin freshman since 1996.
No matter how many times freshman guard Brad Davison clapped his hands on defense, let out fist pumps to the crowd on offense or hit highly contested jumpers, No. 2 Michigan State (16-2 Big Ten, 28-3 overall) failed to go away. Wisconsin’s (7-11, 14-16) 68-63 loss on Senior Day marked yet another time the Badgers have hung with some of its top opponents, but failed to close the deal.
In late January, when Wisconsin (7-10 Big Ten, 14-16 overall) fell to No. 2 Michigan State (15-2, 27-3), a talented trio of Spartan frontcourt players proved too much to handle for the undersized Badgers.
Andy Van Vliet has spent the majority of the 2017-’18 season playing on Wisconsin’s practice scout team.
The Wisconsin women’s tennis team (6-4) will travel to Blacksburg, Va. this weekend to take on the Virginia Tech Hokies (6-0) and James Madison Dukes (6-0), two teams with whom the Badgers do not have much history. After starting the season off hot, UW will hope to rebound from a four-match losing streak, which saw it drop to 6-4 on the season.
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