Despite not having a season worth remembering, Wisconsin’s seniors will take the ice looking to come away with a win in their final home games.
It’s not often that two conference rookies of the year face each other in the same game. That’s what’s happening Saturday as Annie Pankowski and Wisconsin take on Victoria Bach and Boston University in the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament.
Working to become the top dog in the Big Ten is a tiring task, but it carries a reward UW will be grateful to have as it embarks upon the next step of becoming one of this program’s great teams.
Students and fans alike know just where to look for him: in the same bottom row seats off the corner of the ice. He’ll be there, most likely wearing the same white sweater and red turtleneck that have become almost his trademark.
Spoiler alert, the Badgers are the odds-on favorite to win their first Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament since 2008. Here are how the rest of the tournament’s top seeds stack up against UW.
When you think of Wisconsin athletics, several things immediately come to mind.
As a redshirt senior, Frank Cousins has seen the best and worst of Wisconsin wrestling. In his redshirt freshman year, the Badgers turned in a strong season with four All-Americans and a 10th place finish in the NCAA Championships only to turn around and go winless in Big Ten competition the next year.
For much of the season, eight teams—Kentucky, Duke, Virginia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Villanova, Kansas and Gonzaga—have dominated the NCAA men’s basketball polls and storylines. These teams have combined for just 22 total losses, with Kansas owning seven of those against the nation’s toughest schedule.
After quite possibly the most successful regular season in program history, the Badgers were appropriately rewarded by the rest of their conference in the Big Ten basketball honors.
Nine games after the NBA trade deadline, it would be easy to criticize the Bucks’ deal that sent leading scorer Brandon Knight to Phoenix in a three-team swap.
After three straight years of losing in the semifinals, the Badgers are finally WCHA Final Face-Off Champions. Wisconsin was powered by sophomore forward Sarah Nurse, who scored four times in two games and was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
With the Big Ten tournament looming and a chance at a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament still in play, the sixth-ranked Wisconsin Badgers wanted to make a statement in the final game of the regular season.
Despite finishing a mediocre eighth place as a team, Wisconsin wrestling claimed an individual conference champion at this weekend’s Big Ten Championships in Columbus, Ohio.
The Badgers (2-14-2 Big Ten, 4-24-4 overall) have had many instances of offensive futility this year, but this weekend’s series was their low point, shut out by Michigan State (9-6-2, 15-4-2) in both games in East Lansing.
With the Big Ten season just two weeks away, Wisconsin (9-12) traveled to Tampa, Fla. to get warmed up for conference play in the USF Under Armour Invitational. Wisconsin left looking much improved from its mediocre season start, with a 3-2 record in the tournament and a play that will easily make the season highlight reel.
They say it gets lonely at the top, which means the Badgers are about to enjoy some solitude thanks to a strong, clinching win in their rival’s own house.
After a strong first half of play, Wisconsin looked like a possible cinderella team in this year’s Big Ten Tournament. Then, a second half collapse wiped out any chance of that happening as the Badgers (5-13 Big Ten, 9-20 overall) fell to Purdue (3-15, 11-19) 58-56 in a tightly contested match at the Sears Centre Arena in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.
Wisconsin head coach Mark Johnson may or may not believe in déjà vu, but as his team advances to the WCHA Final Face-Off for the fifth straight season, it may be time to start believing. For the third consecutive year, the Badgers will face North Dakota in the semifinals.
One trophy down, two to go.
By Bobby Ehrlich
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