The Badger Herald

SPORTS

Balanced scoring leads team to championship

JEFF SCHORFHEIDE/Herald photo

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Also by Ben Voelkel:

Wisconsin ends regular season (March 7, 2008)
Happy basketball players come from Wisconsin (March 6, 2008)
Big Ten Champs! (March 6, 2008)
Vintage finale to storied career (March 5, 2008)
Flowers, Krabbenhoft combine to shut down MSU's Neitzel, Morgan (February 29, 2008)

by Ben Voelkel

Monday, March 10, 2008

EVANSTON, Ill. — This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Most teams that lose half of their scoring from the previous year, including a first-team All-American, the program’s leading scorer and the highest scoring duo in school history, generally don’t come back the following year and win conference championships outright.

But as they proved again Saturday, the Wisconsin basketball team is not most teams.

In earning an undisputed Big Ten title with a 65-52 win over Northwestern, Wisconsin turned in a performance that typified how a team without much big-name star power or a specified go-to player was able to win the Big Ten.

“We didn’t get away from what we’ve done,” senior forward Brian Butch said. “When we do get away from what we do, we’re not that good.”

They did it with balanced scoring.

Without All-American Alando Tucker and classmate Kammron Taylor to lean on, it was an egalitarian offense for UW for most of the season. The Badgers — a team that had a five-game stretch earlier in the Big Ten season with a different player scoring 20 points or more in each game — got 20 points from Butch, who in the final regular season conference game of his career, also matched a career high with 14 rebounds.

But just like it has all season, Wisconsin didn’t just get scoring from only one place. Two other Badgers besides Butch (Jason Bohannon, 15 points; Marcus Landry, 12) broke the 10-point barrier, and a fourth player, Joe Krabbenhoft, ended only one point shy of double digits.

“That’s the unique thing about this team,” Butch said. “We just don’t have — and I kind of sound like a broken record when I say it — but we just don’t have one guy that you can key on. … I think that explains how we’ve been all year.”

They did it with defense.

The Badgers entered Saturday’s game allowing the fewest points per game in the nation, just 54.4 every contest, a defense that gives up nearly four points less than the second-best team in the Big Ten and ranks third nationally in defensive efficiency, according to statistician Ken Pomeroy.

That stifling defense was on display again, as the Wildcats scored just 52 points on 59 possessions, an average of just over 0.87 points every time down the floor.

It was that sort of defense that helped alleviate some of the burden of losing Tucker and Taylor’s scoring and became the identity of this Badgers team.

“On the defensive end, they were willing to make that commitment to cover, help, pinch and sink,” Ryan said. “This group, defensively, gave themselves an opportunity to be champions in the Big Ten.”

They did it with rebounding.

Coming into the game, the Badgers were one of the better rebounding teams in the Big Ten, outrebounding their opponents by an average of just over five per game.

The same gritty toughness that shaped the defense also came through in the rebounding game, as the Badgers pulled down as many offensive rebounds (14) as the Wildcats did defensively.

Four Badgers grabbed five misses or more, as Wisconsin nearly doubled Northwestern’s rebounds, winning the battle 38-21.

“Their guys are big, strong guys and we weren’t able to keep them off of the backboard,” Northwestern head coach Bill Carmody said. “They were getting very good position, and they just sort of overpowered us, I thought.”

A lot of that was due to Butch. The forward dominated the glass and the undersized Northwestern front line for his 14 rebounds, but he missed a potential career-high for that statistic as several loose balls bounced away from him late in the second half.

Balanced scoring, defense and rebounding. That was the successful formula for Wisconsin Saturday, and that was the concoction that won the Big Ten championship, even without a superstar.

“Last year I was so confident, I would say maybe 90 percent in Alando Tucker and 10 percent in us,” Krabbenhoft said. “This team is a complete team. I’m just glad to be a part of it.”

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