Wisconsin basketball mounts historic comeback, beats Gophers
This is not the same Wisconsin basketball team fans came to expect in December
Madison, WI — On Sunday, the Wisconsin men’s basketball team struggled to shoot the ball, shooting 34.3% from the field and 24.3% from beyond the arc, in a competitive two-point home loss. The Wisconsin Badgers continued their homestand on Wednesday night and again struggled to shoot the ball in the first half. But UW’s shooting fortunes flipped in the final 20 minutes, and with them, the final result flipped too.
When Wisconsin and Minnesota retreated to their respective locker rooms at halftime, UW trailed its border battle rival by 18. An abysmal 5-28 shooting performance, in which the Badgers’ lone two-point basket came in the form of a Nick Boyd layup in the final second before the break, put Wisconsin in the position of needing to mount a historic comeback to extend a historic streak.
By shooting 70% from the field in the second half, including a red-hot 9-15 on threes, Wisconsin men’s basketball tied its largest second-half comeback in its 128-year history and set a new program-best mark with its 11th straight win over Minnesota in a 67-63 victory for the record book.
“We couldn’t put our heads down, or we were going to lose that game,” Badgers guard John Blackwell said of his team’s mentality after the opening 20 minutes.
Badgers’ defense tightens up, shorthanded Gophers offense falters
Combined with Wisconsin’s prolific second-half offense, its defense did just enough to hold Minnesota at bay. The Gophers scored only 28 points after halftime, but did so on 50% shooting. The Badgers forced eight second-half turnovers, getting 14 points off Minnesota giveaways.
“Aggressiveness. Physicality. We had pulse. I thought we just, you know, we initiated things better,” Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard said of the difference between his team’s effort in the first and second halves. “We were in attack mode better. We got to the free-throw line. I thought we were just tougher in all aspects of the game.”
UW shot 16-22 from the free throw line on the night, including 13-18 in the second half, and made nine of their final ten attempts from the charity stripe.
“I just thought they played with a little bit more force defensively,” Minnesota head coach Niko Medved added. “And then we didn’t play with enough force on offense and weren’t able to play through some of the contact that you have to at this level.”
The Gophers came up just short as their leading scorer, Cade Tyson, was sidelined. The senior, averaging 20.1 points per game and 16.4 in league play, suffered an ankle injury in Minnesota’s loss over the weekend to the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
After Blackwell shot 1-8 in what he described as “one of the worst first halves” the guard has had, he managed a game-high 23 points on the night, pouring in 18 in the second half.
The Michigan native showcased the talent that makes him an NBA Draft prospect. Blackwell shot 4-9 on threes, 11-14 from the free throw line, and added a team-high seven rebounds.
“He’s a true three-level scorer,” Medved said of Blackwell. “When he’s really making his three-ball like that, he’s a load. He’s quick off the dribble, can get by you, he’s got a mid-range game, can go either way. When he gets it going, he’s really, really difficult to stop.”
With 19 seconds remaining, Blackwell made a step-back three-pointer that Medved described as “huge,” putting UW up two possessions in the closing moments.
Blackwell scored seven points on Wisconsin’s final three possessions.
Wisconsin men’s basketball completes historic comeback, changes early-season fortunes
The Badgers had mounted a pair of impressive come-from-behind victories already this season. Wisconsin had erased its largest second-half deficit this season eight days ago when John Blackwell made a buzzer-beating three to knock off Minnesota in the first meeting between the border battle rivals this season. UW’s largest comeback overall had come just one game prior when it knocked off #2 Michigan on the road after trailing by 14 in the first half.
Wisconsin’s halftime deficit of 18 points on Wednesday was its largest overcome this season. It also tied for the program’s largest second-half comeback victory ever.
The Badgers came back from 18 down against in-state rival Marquette in 1948, winning 67-63. In 2021, Johnny Davis poured in 20 points to defeat Indiana and erase another 18-point deficit en route to a Big Ten title. UW trailed by as many as 22 points in that 2021 matchup before a Badgers’ second-half turnaround continued to keep the Hoosiers winless inside the Kohl Center (a fun fact that holds at time of publication).
Since January 6th, Wisconsin has brought its shaky-at-best NCAA Tournament resume to a solid footing by winning six of its last seven games, and sits as a consensus nine-seed, according to Bracket Matrix. To do so, UW has needed double-digit comebacks in three of its past six games, but its abilitity to overcome those deficits is a welcome change to Gard (even though the two-time Big Ten Coach of the Year admits he would rather play with the lead).
“We got a toughness to us that we didn’t have in November. We got some fight to us,” Gard said after his 124th career Big Ten win, good for the 20th-most among all coaches in conference history.
Against the Villanova Wildcats, the Badgers fell 76-66 due to a similarly disjointed effort. Wisconsin scored only 22 points in the first half (which was, before Wednesday night’s first-half 17, its lowest offensive output in a half this season), but forced overtime before being outscored 20-10 in the extra period.
Whether drawing a comparison to that night in Milwaukee or to UW’s season-low 63-point showing against the TCU Horned Frogs, it is undeniable that something is different about this mid-to-late-season version of the Badgers. Wednesday night’s version, which, for the first time, won despite scoring fewer than 78 points, found a way to win despite a stretch of bad shooting—an idea very much in question less than two months ago.
Perhaps that is enough to propel the Badgers to March, despite them being likely underdogs in seven of their remaining 10 contests.
For what it is worth, Blackwell believes that things are different with this Wisconsin team from what they were not long ago:
“I think we just have more fight, and I think we’re more together. I think games like that early in the season, we got down a little bit and just dropped our heads. But this game, we kept fighting, we kept chipping away.
“Communication on the court in the second half, we’re talking to each other, and everybody’s just, you know, we’re gonna make a mistake. And Jack [Janicki] got my back, [Braeden Carrington] got my back, and Nick [Boyd] got my back. I think we didn’t have that earlier in the year in games like Villanova.
“And then closing time. We just didn’t close that game against Villanova the right way. And I think practice on closing out games has been better, so I think we executed down the stretch today.”
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