No one thought they could do it. No one, that is, except themselves.
The Wisconsin men’s basketball team clinched at least a share of the Big Ten title with a 74-54 victory over Michigan Wednesday night, marking the first time Wisconsin has won the league championship since 1947. The victory guarantees the Badgers the top seed and accompanying first-round bye in next week’s Big Ten Tournament.
Although many preseason publications had the Badgers finishing in the cellar of the Big Ten, the Badgers and head coach Bo Ryan, who won eight conference titles during his coaching tenure at UW-Platteville, knew exactly what they were capable of.
“Conference championships — at Platteville, that’s what it was all about,” Ryan said. “You play for the conference first. That’s what you get here for, and that’s what these guys did.”
Wisconsin connected on 13 of its 19 three-point attempts in the game, breaking the previous Kohl Center record of 12 threes, set by the Badgers two years ago against Michigan. By comparison, Michigan hit only three of its 14 three-point attempts.
Senior Travon Davis, playing his final game on his home floor, grabbed a career-high 10 rebounds to go along with his five points and seven assists. Fellow senior Charlie Wills battled foul trouble all night but managed to score four points; he also blocked a shot and had two assists.
Kirk Penney and Devin Harris led all scorers with 21 points each. Penney connected on nine of his 17 shots from the field, including three of four from downtown. Harris, who was playing on his 19th birthday, was scorching from the field, hitting seven of his 10 shots and 4 of 6 from three-point range.
The Badgers were on fire in the first half, shooting 58 percent from the field and 80 percent from beyond the arc. Two quick threes from Penney and Harris put the Badgers up 6-1 early and the Kohl Center crowd, sensing that the Badgers were primed to clinch the Big Ten, erupted.
Michigan kept up with the Badgers’ hot shooting, however, as LaVell Blanchard poured in the first 10 Michigan points, hitting a free throw and three shots from behind the arc in the first 5:22. Blanchard’s third long-range shot gave Michigan a 10-8 lead, which would be its last of the game.
Michigan hit the wall when Blanchard, the Wolverines’ leading scorer and rebounder, picked up his third foul with 6:56 remaining in the first half. With Blanchard on the bench, the Michigan offense became anemic.
The Wolverines were only able to score two more points before the half, allowing the Badgers to stretch an 11-point lead into a 25-point margin at the break, as they went into the locker room up 48-23. The 48 first-half points tied the Kohl Center record for points in a half, set by Wisconsin against Iowa in 1998.
“I think how many three-pointers they made and I think that with the three-point shot, points can add up very quickly,” Michigan head coach Tommy Amaker said. “We were hoping to keep it close as we try to massage the game, and they blew it open in the first half.”
Michigan never got close in the second half, as the Badgers continued to dominate from the perimeter. Although Wisconsin shot only 39 percent from the field in the second period, they hit 55 percent of their three-point attempts, and the Wolverines never cut the lead to less than 16 points.
Only five players scored for the Wolverines, and two of those players recorded only two points each. Blanchard was held to just four points in the second half, as Chris Young, Bernard Robinson Jr. and Chuck Bailey were the only other Wolverines to score in the second stanza.
As the game neared its end, the noise level in the Kohl Center reached a feverish pitch. With less than 30 seconds left in the game, Harris stole the ball from Michigan point guard Avery Queen and raced down the floor. As defenders neared him, Harris exploded towards the basket and threw down a thunderous tomahawk jam, causing the crowd to erupt. Eighteen seconds later it was over, and jubilant Wisconsin fans flooded the floor to share in the celebration with their Badgers.
“This is very special,” Penney said. “It was an awesome feeling to be out there and to play with an awesome bunch of guys and such a wonderful coaching staff. We’ll enjoy this for the time being, and tomorrow we’ll think about other things.”
A few weeks ago it appeared as if Wisconsin would finish towards the middle of the Big Ten pack, but losses Tuesday night by conference leaders Ohio State and Indiana put the Badgers in position to clinch the conference championship.
“Those wins from the other teams in the conference last night — I’m more than happy we were put in this position,” Wills said. “It goes back to before that — if we don’t put ourselves in this position, if we don’t get those wins early on and also get those six games in a row, a couple tough ones on the road and working together, we wouldn’t be here.”
