After earning just one victory in its first five conference games of the year, the UW women’s basketball team (7-8, 1-4) will look for a turnaround game against Northwestern (7-9, 0-5) Sunday.
“It’s a pivotal week for us,” head coach Lisa Stone said. “Our basketball team is a team that wants the same thing that the coach wants, and that’s obviously victories but more importantly to play together and play with purpose and passion. It’s extremely important to play well at home, and by doing that it will bring us more confidence for the next time we go on the road to hopefully improve on our performance at both Indiana and Iowa.”
While the struggling Wildcats, who have fallen to the bottom of the Big Ten standings and are still searching for their first conference win, provide an excellent opportunity for the Badgers to earn a conference victory, Stone and the Badgers will not take Sunday’s game lightly.
“Northwestern is a dangerous team,” Stone said. “I don’t look at their record, I look at their players and I look at how they’ve played. They took Indiana to overtime at Indiana, and Indiana walloped us. I look more at the fact that they have capabilities of being dangerous. They’re looking for a win too, so they’re fighting and clawing and they might look at us as an opportunity for them.”
Sunday’s game features the weakest offensive teams in the Big Ten, as the 10th-ranked Wisconsin attack, which averages 58.3 points per game, faces off against the 11th-ranked Northwestern offense, which manages just 53.3 points per contest.
The Badgers and Wildcats are two of just three Big Ten teams that average fewer points than their opponents. Thanks to an effective defense, which ranks sixth in the Big Ten, the Badgers average just 2.5 points fewer than their opponents. Northwestern ranks last in the conference in scoring margin, averaging 8.1 points fewer than their opposition.
Leading Northwestern’s struggling offense is guard Samantha McComb, the team’s leading scorer with 12.1 points per game. McComb and forward Ifeoma Okonkwo are the only Wildcats to average double figures in scoring this season.
The Badgers will look to capitalize on their height advantage, as 6-foot-7 center Lello Gebisa and 6-foot-5 center Emily Ashbaugh will face a Northwestern squad that does not have a player listed over 6-foot-4 on its roster.
Gebisa and Ashbaugh hope to dominate the boards against the Wildcats, who rank last in the Big Ten in rebounding (31.6 per game) and have been out-rebounded by an average of 4.3 boards per game this season.
Wisconsin hopes to score early, avoiding the slow starts that plagued them against Iowa and Indiana-Purdue-Fort Wayne. In a 66-46 loss to Iowa Jan. 18, the Badgers failed to score in the game’s first nine minutes and could not recover. Against IPFW, the Badgers missed their first five shots and fell behind 7-0 before rallying for a 75-59 win.
For the season, the Badgers are 7-0 when they lead at halftime and 0-8 when they trail at the half.
“Scoring early and often has always been a forte of mine, and I think we have some offensive sets and offensive players that are capable of doing that,” Stone said. “We have to make that a strong point without succumbing to having defensive flaws. If we can score early and often and tune up that defense and rebound, we have confidence, and I think that’s huge for our team.”
Currently ranked ninth in the Big Ten with just one conference win, the Badgers will treat Sunday’s game as a chance to gain momentum at home before heading to West Lafayette to take on Purdue.
“I always believe we can win,” Stone said. “We prepare our team to put ourselves in a position to win. Preparing to win is a mindset as well as a preparation, and I believe we’re making some headway in that direction. Having two at home this week hopefully will get us jumpstarted into those road games up ahead.
