When a team from a mid-major conference plays a power six conference opponent, it is not uncommon for them to have a size disadvantage. Sunday’s game against Northern Illinois, from the Mid-American Conference, was no different as the Badgers’ frontcourt combination of junior forward Jacki Gulczynski and redshirt junior forward Michala Johnson dominated en route to a 71-51 victory.
Gulczynski and Johnson, 6-foot-1 and 6-foot-3 respectively, were too much for a Northern Illinois team whose tallest player that saw the floor on Sunday was just 6 feet tall. Wisconsin won the rebounding total, 47-36, in large part because of the combined 19 rebounds Gulczynski and Johnson had.
Gulczynski paced the Badgers in the first half with 13 points and five rebounds in 14 minutes of action. She finished with 15 points and nine rebounds for the game. With Johnson drawing a double team early on, Gulczynski was left open in the post and on the perimeter. She was 3-for-8 on three point attempts with all three of her makes coming in the first half.
“With [Johnson] getting double teamed — she’s a great post player — so they have to send two people at her or else she’s going to go to work on every play,” Gulczynski said. “Things spread out then. We tried to focus on getting to the open spot and when you catch it, you have to make it.”
With the Huskies putting the double team on Johnson, Gulczynski was left open in the low post as well. She may have only scored four points from the paint, but Gulczynski was pivotal in the Badgers owning the advantage in rebounds.
“We want to post Jacki [Gulczynski] down [in the post],” Kelsey said. “She’s very capable of scoring on the block as well. She missed one or two that she probably makes in her sleep, but she’ll get those to fall.”
Northern Illinois head coach Kathi Bennett, whose dad, Dick Bennett, coached at Wisconsin, knew Wisconsin’s size would be a large factor in the outcome of the game. Bennett, who was also an assistant coach at Wisconsin, had to pick her poison when choosing who to double team, which left both Johnson and Gulczynski open throughout the game.
“[Wisconsin’s] size and length really affected us,” Bennett said. “There was that middle stretch where Michala [Johnson] really went off on us. But we really tried to say ‘no lane’ or ‘no middle.’ We knew their size and offensive rebounding would be a factor.”
Johnson finished the game with her second double-double of the season scoring 12 points and recording 10 rebounds. Although she had eight of her 12 points in the first half, Johnson scored four points early in the second half to spark the Badgers on a 7-2 run to open the half.
“In the second half we needed to pick it up,” Johnson said. “Our energy was a little low so we tried to pick up the energy and find the open man. [We used] the high-low a couple of times, I know a couple of times me and Jacki [Gulczynski] were both open. A couple of times I passed it to her and a couple of times she passed it to me.”
“When I took the job at Northern Illinois, I knew about Jacki [Gulczynski],” Bennett said. “We tried to throw her off rhythm and we did a terrible job on her early on. When I rotated the defense, that’s when Michala [Johnson] went off.”
The inside-out combination of Gulczynski and Johnson couldn’t be solved by the Huskies, which really allowed the Badgers to open things up around the perimeter. Although they shot just under 35 percent from three-point range, the Badgers did manage to score 24 points off three-pointers, largely due to Gulczynski and Johnson’s presence down low opening things up outside the arc. Senior guard Taylor Wurtz and sophomore Nicole Bauman benefited from the inside-out play of the Badgers, knocking in two three-pointers a piece.
“It’s nice to have the inside and out,” Kelsey said. “When you do have that, it makes it hard for teams to pick somebody. We have to get it to different people in different spots and not allow [the other team] to get comfortable.”
Whether it was Johnson or Gulczynski, the Huskies didn’t have an answer for either player. The Badgers’ frontcourt paved the way for their success on Sunday and is a large reason why Wisconsin has started the season 3-0.
