The UW men’s basketball team put any doubts regarding its shooting consistency to bed Saturday night, as the No. 15-ranked Badgers rolled to a 68-42 victory over Detroit.

After struggling on the offensive end in the season’s first four games, Wisconsin found its shooting touch against the Titans and extended their home winning streak to 16 games.

“We shot pretty bad the last three or four games,” said Wisconsin shooting-guard Freddie Owens, who went 6-9 from the field and finished the game with 13 points. “We knew the shots were going to come. It was just a matter of staying focused on defense and trying to shut down our opponents. We knew the shots would come, and tonight they did.”

As a team, the Badgers shot a season-best 48.9 percent from the field against the Titans and had three players other than Owens notch double figures in scoring.

Devin Harris, Andreas Helmigk and Zach Morley chipped in 13, 12 and 10 points, respectively, as Wisconsin’s balanced offensive attack proved to be too much for their Horizon League foe to handle.

“We just got beat by a very good basketball team,” said UDM head coach Perry Watson following the game. “I’ve coached against Bo (Ryan’s) team when he was in our league, and one of the things his teams exemplify is that they’re going to fight you tooth and nail for everything, and they don’t beat themselves. We had a tough night out there; we couldn’t get anything easy. We just got handled by a very good team tonight.”

After shooting a sizzling 60-percent from the field in the game’s first half, the Badgers entered intermission with a 30-20 lead.

Detroit’s Rulon Harris, who would finish the contest with a game-high 18 points, also headed into halftime with a hot hand.

The senior guard would find an early rhythm, as he connected on two of his first three attempts from beyond the arc and paced the Titans with eight first-half points.

Beginning with a three-pointer by UW forward Mike Wilkinson to open up the game’s scoring in the second half, however, Harris and the Titans would fall victim to yet another stanza of on-target Badger shooting.

“We got a lot of things right there early in that second half, and that’s good,” UW head coach Bo Ryan said. “That helped, because you don’t want to give Detroit a chance to explode … If you follow their scorers this year and see how they play, I think you’ll see they can hurt some teams.”

Devin Harris dished out nine assists and didn’t commit a single turnover for the Badgers Saturday. He consistently found the open man and demonstrated why the Big Ten coaches chose him as the conference’s pre-season player of the year.

“I thought Devin (Harris) did a great job at drawing their defensive double team and drawing the help and finding the open guy,” Coach Ryan said. “He thinks like the head coach now when it comes to turnovers. He had one deflected and you talk about a street fight going after that loose ball, because he knew if they got that loose ball, that’s a turnover. Devin was a big key in controlling the offensive tempo; pushed it when it was there, when it wasn’t got the guys set.”

Another key contributor for Wisconsin in their victory over Detroit was 6-foot-9 forward Andreas Helmigk.

Helmigk would make the most of his first career start, as the sophomore would connect on five of his six shot attempts, pull down four rebounds and dish out two assists in 22 minutes of playing time.

And he, like teammate Freddie Owens, felt Wisconsin’s offense was clicking against the Titans Saturday.

“We rotated the ball pretty good; we were boxing out after the shot and going to the glass pretty hard,” Helmigk said. “I think we shot for a good percentage, too; we got good shots off the swing.”

“You could tell a huge difference from the last three games,” Owens added. “We are finally starting to click on the same page as far as timing goes. We have guys making cuts at the right time. We have guys keeping their heads up and finding people in the post on cuts, and that’s what we need.”

Owens, Helmigk and the Badgers will hope to carry their shooting touch into their matchup with Green Bay Wednesday. The team will play the second game of their four-game home stand, which includes the Phoenix as well as fellow in-state rivals Marquette and UW-Milwaukee, before facing Ohio University Dec. 27.