[media-credit name=’AJ Maclean’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]The Wisconsin men’s basketball team opened its exhibition schedule in convincing fashion with an 81-42 victory over a passionate UW-Parkside squad at the Kohl Center Wednesday.

“We knew they were going to play hard, lay their bodies out there,” head coach Bo Ryan said. “We’ll get the same thing Tuesday.”

Head coach Bo Ryan cycled through 13 players in the contest, with 12 seeing at least 10 minutes of action. Even the diminutive Tanner Bronson etched his name in the score sheet with a late three from the corner and a dish to Andreas Helmigk.

The Rangers kept the game close in the early going, but Wisconsin pulled away with a 16-0 first-half run. After a lay-up from Parkside center Kevin Boutelle brought the Rangers within two at 12-10, Wisconsin forward Alando Tucker kicked off the Badger run with a lay-in after a Clayton Hanson steal.

The Badgers rattled off 14 more unanswered points after Tucker’s bucket to take a commanding 28-10 lead with 5:38 remaining in the first half. Boutelle finally stopped the bleeding for Parkside with a lay-up inside to cut the lead to 28-12, but the damage was done.

Parkside never recovered from the early run. The Rangers briefly regained the momentum in the waning moments of the first half with a 3-pointer from Gareth Malkowski that cut the lead to 33-17, but the Badgers closed out the half with a 5-0 run to enter the locker room with a 38-17 halftime lead.

Malkowski’s 3-pointer was the first of the game for the Rangers, who missed their first nine attempts from beyond the arc. Poor outside shooting plagued Parkside throughout the first half, as the Rangers knocked down just 7 of 27 (25.9 percent) from the field and shot 1-10 from 3-point land in the opening stanza. Meanwhile, the Badgers shot a respectable 43.3 percent from the field (13-30) and 37.5 percent from 3-point range (3-8).

The Rangers came out firing in the second half, opening with a 5-0 run to pull within 16 points at 38-22.

Then forward Brian Butch took over. Butch came up with a pair of 3-point plays on consecutive possessions, each coming off a feed from Zach Morley. The former McDonald’s All-American sparked an 11-0 run that pushed the Wisconsin lead to 27 points at 49-22 with 16:12 remaining.

Parkside answered with a pair of threes from Malkowski to pull within 21 at the 14:57 mark, but the Badgers built the lead back to 27 when Butch drained a 3-pointer to cap a 6-0 run with 12:09 to play.

It was all Badgers the rest of the way. After a lay-up from Parkside forward Brad Ferstenou, Wisconsin scored nine unanswered points to open a 69-34 lead with 5:38 remaining in the game.

Less than a minute later, freshman Greg Stiemsma pulled down an offensive rebound and dropped in a lay-up to spark an 8-0 run. Reserve forward Jason Chappell capped off the run with a pair of free throws that gave the Badgers their largest lead of the night at 77-36.

With 4:31 remaining, Bronson entered the game for the first time, becoming the last Badger to take the floor on a night when every player who dressed for the game saw at least five minutes of playing time. The only players on the roster who did not see action were guard Boo Wade, absent due to an indefinite leave of absence from the team, and forward DeAaron Williams, who opted not to play in order to retain the possibility of redshirting this season.

Bronson made his presence felt with an assist to forward Andreas Helmigk at the 3:29 mark. The reserve guard got himself on the board with a three-pointer from the corner that drew raucous applause from the 17,142 in attendance, many of whom had chanted his name to urge Coach Ryan to bring him off the bench for the final minutes.

With Bronson on the floor, the Badgers closed out the 81-42 victory with Chappell providing the finishing touch from the free throw line. Though it was a decidedly one-sided affair on the scoreboard, the game provided the Badgers with a solid early tune-up.

“You can’t look at the score to see exactly what that game means to us,” Ryan said. “When you try to handle those screens and handle their action and then look at some of these teams that we’ve played where it’s a lot of one-on-one stuff, that’s what I like about it.”