After reeling off an impressive three-game winning streak in conference play, the UW women’s basketball team met its match last night at the Kohl Center.
The Michigan State Spartans and their tenacious defense were able to keep the Badgers out of sync offensively for pretty much the entire game, holding UW to just 18 points in the second half.
Wisconsin was only able to muster 43 total points, successfully scoring on just 16 of its 47 field goal attempts.
Exempting the 42 points posted in UW’s loss to Ohio State in January, the point total is the team’s lowest of the season.
“Stephanie [Rich] did a really nice job from the perimeter of getting shots off, but really that is where most of our attempts came from … and to beat a zone you have to go from the inside out,” said UW head coach Jane Albright. “Lello (Gebisa) had a real good first half offensively … but then in the second half we really couldn’t come up with anybody inside to get any buckets.”
Stephanie Rich, UW’s leading scorer at 11.5 points per game, proved to be the Badgers’ only consistent scoring threat.
The sophomore shooting guard was able to tally 16 points and converted on four of her 11 attempts from beyond the arc.
“We think Stephanie Rich is an excellent three-point shooting guard, and we were always concerned with where she was,” said MSU head coach Joanne McCallie. “Sometimes we thought we were on her and she hit it anyway.”
The Badgers’ inability to find an offensive rhythm can be largely attributed to their early foul trouble.
UW’s starting power forward, Lello Gebisa, fouled out of the game with just under 13 minutes to play, while her sister Ebba and starting center Emily Ashbaugh each finished just one foul shy of joining her on the bench.
With all three members of their starting frontcourt spending much of the game on the sidelines, the Badgers’ scoring options were almost solely limited to Rich and the other perimeter guards as the Spartan zone defense limited the existence of a post presence.
“Usually we follow our game plans really well, but I think it was a real hard thing to do tonight because we got in such quick foul trouble … it really changed our rotation,” said Albright. “I think Emily (Ashbaugh) was only able to play four minutes in the first half, and Ebba (Gebisa) picked up those fouls real early guarding Syreeta (Bromfield). And we just never seemed to get into any type of rhythm.”
With six conference games remaining on their schedule, including matchups with the 19-5 Penn State Nittany Lions and the 16-4 Minnesota Gophers, the Badgers will be looking to put this game behind them and make a late-season surge in preparation for the Big Ten Tournament in March.
