The Big Ten conference is living up to its reputation of being the deepest league in America. Wisconsin’s 64-54 upset of the No. 2 Michigan Wolverines following losses in four of the last five games is a good case in point.
So, how did a Badgers team that struggled to find consistency find a way to win this game against one of the country’s most efficient squads?
Let’s go a bit beyond the boxscore for this matchup and look at some of the keys to success.
Wisconsin held Michigan to 12 points below projections
NCAAGameSim.com (yes that’s a real thing) had this game 66-62 in favor of the Wolverines. Only one team came close to measuring up to expectations and that was the Wisconsin Badgers, who scored 64 points in the win.
How did the Badgers hold Michigan 12 points below projected models?
The biggest help was in what the Badgers did to frustrate Michigan’s star freshman Ingas Brazdeikis. He came in to the game averaging 15.6 points per game, but couldn’t find the bottom of the bucket in this one. He had only been held in single digits twice this season coming in to the game as well.
Wisconsin only allowed him to attempt five shots and three of them were from beyond the arc.
Not allowing one of the key scorers for Michigan to get on the board certainly helped matters in a big way. Kobe King and Aleem Ford did a nice job of help defense on him as well.
But, beyond all of that, the Badgers held Michigan to just 9 offensive rebounds and tied the defensive rebounding game at 25-25 and were just two off the overall number. Considering Michigan came in to the game as one of the better rebounding margin teams in the conference (+2.0) and UW came in at -5.7 per game in conference play, this was a major plus for the Badgers.
Kobe King Played a Key Role
You may see just six points on the scoresheet from King, but he was vital to UW’s success in this game in ways that maybe you didn’t notice. His five rebounds were huge, especially his lone offensive rebound of the matchup.
King pulled down an offensive board with 1:29 to play and sure he lost the ball out of bounds after that, but, Michigan wasn’t allowed anything in transition as the game stood at 55-51 and that made a big difference.
Instead, Michigan had to settle for a Jordan Poole missed a three-pointer on the other end. That was compounded by fouling D’Mitrik Trice just seven seconds later. Trice hit both his free throws and UW was up 57-51 with 1:12 to play.
UW having that six-point lead proved to be too much for Michigan to overcome and most importantly, changed the way Michigan was comfortable playing this game.
King also played 31 minutes of the game as he proved to be a key piece of UW’s defensive effort. His versatility in guarding speedy guards and bigger forwards proved invaluable.
Can he take this performance and build off of it? If so, the Badgers coaching staff has to seriously consider starting him the rest of the way. He adds so much more than Iverson does on either end of the court at this point in the season.
Assists Pile Up, Badgers Win
One of the biggest issues in UW’s losing streak as of late has been the inability of the offense to get on the same page. That wasn’t a problem on Saturday at the Kohl Center, as Wisconsin recorded 17 assists on 26 made shots.
What does that really mean though? It means the Badgers weren’t playing a ton of one-on-one basketball, weren’t forcing bad shots and weren’t getting too deep in to the shot clock either.
Badgers teams of the past and present have always been at their best when the ball is moving around of offense and assists were piling up.
Wisconsin came in to the game 12th in the Big Ten in assists, averaging 13.7 per game on the year and just 11.3 per game in conference play.
It’s no small coincidence UW’s offense was more effective and efficient when it recorded far more assists than the season averages tell us.
In Wisconsin’s 12 wins so far this season, the team is averaging 13.5 assists per game and have had 17 or more assists in seven of those 12 wins.
That should tell us all that the Badgers win-loss record has a lot to do with how the players are getting each other involved in the game or not.