Senior forward Mike Wilkinson scored a game-high 19 points and grabbed 11 rebounds as his Wisconsin Badgers tipped off the 2004-05 season with a 77-44 romp over visiting Pennsylvania in front of a sold-out Kohl Center crowd.
In a sloppy, grinding game, in which the two teams accounted for a combined 50 personal fouls and 34 turnovers, the Badgers were able to prevail by out-shooting and out-rebounding the Quakers. UW connected on 24-of-47 shots from the floor, for an excellent 51.1 shooting percentage. Penn only managed to hit 31.9 percent of its shots and was limited to just three second chance points as Wisconsin took a 40-23 advantage on the boards.
“We knew that (Wisconsin) would play very good defense and that they would not hurt themselves,” Penn head coach Fran Dunphy said. “I’m sure (UW head coach Bo Ryan) is probably not happy with some of the turnovers, but again I think they’re just a real solid, very good basketball team that I’m sure will do very well throughout the course of the year because of that fundamentally sound way that they play.”
Initially struggling from the floor, the Badgers were able separate from the Quakers with a 18-5 scoring run to break an eight-all tie starting just past the 13-minute mark in the first half. During the run, junior forward Ray Nixon came off the bench to score eight points in just six minutes — enough to be the Badger’s leading scorer at the half.
Sophomore point guard Kammron Taylor, making his first career start, converted a three-point play with six seconds remaining in the half to give UW a 36-20 halftime lead. Senior Quaker guard Tim Begley led all scorers with 10 points at the half.
“First night, guys are coming out and trying to play the best they can,” Nixon said. “And Penn’s a great team, they run us off screens and we just had to stick together defensively, and we got away from that a little bit and had some turnovers. Through it all, I think we worked it out.”
Despite Penn’s struggle to produce offense and bring down boards, Ryan was hesitant to praise his team’s defense against the Quakers.
“Defensively we were average, but what I did like was we covered well,” Ryan said. “(We were) trying to take them out of any comfort zones that they like to get in because when they are running their stuff, it’s as pretty as you can possibly want to see. And we didn’t want to see it.”
After a sluggish start to the second half, Wilkinson and red-shirt freshman Brian Butch got the Badger offense rolling. In his Wisconsin regular season debut, Butch chipped in 10 points, scoring six consecutively, to give the Badgers a 29-point lead with just over nine minutes remaining in the game. Wilkinson scored 17 of his points in the second half, hitting six-of-seven field goals, including three three-pointers.
“I was just going out there and basically trying to do the same things I did in the first half and I just found myself open a little bit more in the second half and I was fortunate enough to knock down some of the shots,” Wilkinson said.
“We didn’t rush anything,” Ryan said of the play of his frontcourt. “Mike was struggling to get touches. (Tucker) seemed to rush a few things, but he settled down. (Morley) was okay. He made some good decisions … they didn’t rush anything. They didn’t try to do anything they couldn’t do.”
Begley finished as Penn’s leading scorer with 15 points, while also recording eight rebounds and five assists. Begley shot just three-of-seven from beyond the arc, and the Quakers connected on just five-of-25 three-pointers.
Taylor ran the point for the Badgers for most of his 28 minutes of floor time, scoring seven points and recording six rebounds, but notched just one assist to three turnovers. Senior-transfer Sharif Chambliss and freshman Michael Flowers also manned the point in both their Wisconsin debuts, combining for six points, three assists and three turnovers in 23 minutes. Senior forward Zach Morley contributed a career-high six assists to lead UW.
“Getting guys to think the game instinctively, intuitively,” Ryan said of where his team needs improvement. “…There really wasn’t that much experience out there on the floor. You can’t hide it. You can’t try to talk about it any other way. There aren’t too many guys out there on the floor tonight who were double-teamed in college before. They need to experience that. They need to see some rotations in the heat of a game and not in a practice.”
