[media-credit name=’Brian Faust’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]ANN ARBOR, Mich. — As the snow poured down Saturday outside of Crisler Arena, inside Wisconsin forward Mike Wilkinson poured in 28 points to lead the Badgers to a 72-61 victory over the Wolverines. Despite spending most of the game shadowed by Michigan defensive standout Courtney Sims, the senior front man landed nine of 11 shots from the field and anchored Wisconsin in the post with 15 rebounds.

With Wilkinson leading the way, the Badger frontcourt recovered from a string of shoddy road performances — not the least of which a Jan. 8 loss to Indiana — to beat the Wolverines in the inside game. Although Sims and Michigan power forward Brent Petway combined for nine blocks and 14 boards on the afternoon, Wisconsin managed to secure a 47-32 rebounding advantage, including a 15-9 differential on the weak-side glass.

“We have not been able to keep people off the backboard,” Michigan head coach Tommy Amaker said. “I think second-chance opportunities and defensive rebounds for us were keys. They really hurt us.”

Although satisfied with the inside effort, Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan suspects fortune lent a hand. Against Marquette earlier in the season, an onslaught of perimeter shooting worked against the Badgers as the long shots created long rebounds. Saturday, Wisconsin appeared on the receiving end of the same equation.

“If you look at this game and break down each one of those [rebounds], I have a feeling we were the beneficiaries of a couple tip-tips,” Ryan said. “A couple times down at their end at the end of the first half, I thought we were opportunistic.”

The Badger inside game kicked in early as Wilkinson scored on the old-fashioned 3-point play to give Wisconsin a 9-2 lead. Behind five quick points by Michigan winger Ron Coleman, the Wolverines fought back to within two with 11:40 left on the clock.

Half a minute later, Michigan capitalized on the second of back-to-back turnovers by senior forward Zach Morley with a Dion Harris 3-pointer as the Wolverines grabbed their first lead of the game. With the momentum in hand, Sims led the Michigan charge inside to claim a 21-17 advantage, the Wolves’ largest of the night.

As the Badgers prepared to mount a comeback, Petway stepped up with two dramatic blocks on the same Badger possession. Although the ball rocketed out of bounds on both rejections, the defensive stand ignited the typically sparse Ann Arbor crowd further emaciated by the perilous road conditions.

Wisconsin, however, quickly silenced the Wolverine faithful with a front-loaded assault. With 5:42 left in the half, Wilkinson pushed inside, spun and landed a finger-roll jumper over Michigan forward Graham Brown to reclaim the lead at 23-21. A minute later, Michigan point guard Daniel Horton popped a trey from his usual perch at the top of the key for the final lead change of the game.

Coming off a television timeout with 3:37 remaining in the half, Wilkinson drained a 3-pointer to launch an 18-4 Wisconsin run that extended four-and-a-half minutes into the second stanza.

Early in the second half, Wilkinson drew a foul on Horton while penetrating inside. Although the forward failed to convert the 3-point play from the line, the foul — Horton’s third of the game — put the Wolverine star in foul trouble with more than 19 minutes left to play. Amaker opted to leave Horton in the game but eventually yanked the cord when the junior tallied his fourth while defending junior guard Clayton Hanson.

With their field general on the bench, the Wolverine attack stalled, shrinking the margin by just three points during a Wisconsin drought that saw just eight Badger points over the course of eight minutes.

“It didn’t seem like things were clicking as well as when he was in,” Wisconsin guard Kammron Taylor said. “You always miss your point guard. When he was off the floor I don’t think a lot of things went their way.”

The Wolverine one-guard returned to the court with eight minutes left in regulation to score five points for the struggling Wolverines before succumbing to injury in the closing minutes.

While Horton’s presence at the point — or absence thereof — didn’t go unnoticed in the Michigan offense, from the field the junior suffered a miserable night, shooting just 6-for-19. In fact, despite sharing the team lead with 16 points apiece, the usually potent backcourt tandem of Harris and Horton managed to sink only 31 percent of their shots on the afternoon.

“I’ve seen those guys (Horton and Harris) knock down those shots,” Ryan said. “When they don’t go down, it makes it tougher [for Michigan].”

From the Wisconsin point, Taylor also experienced a scoring drop-off late in the second half. Taylor tallied his final points of the game with nine-and-a-half minutes remaining on the clock but still finished with 13 points off the bench. Just two weeks after putting up 21 at Indiana, the sophomore guard posted another promising road performance in a game where one-guard Sharif Chambliss struggled from the starting spot.

“I always like to prove people wrong,” Taylor said of his success on the road. “You know, hearing the fans chant ‘Chris Rock, Chris Rock,’ the best way to make them be quiet is to come over there and try and get a win.”

In the final two minutes of regulation, Michigan began fouling the Badgers on the inbound looking to gain ground on the perimeter. Yet, with Wisconsin hitting its shots from the charity stripe and the Wolverine sharpshooters consistently missing from the outside (11.1 percent in the second half), the Badgers held on to the double-digit lead.

“They had some good looks at the end that they usually knock down,” Wilkinson said. “They didn’t go tonight and we were fortunate to get the ball inside and have some guys finish and have some guys knock down some free throws. It just happened to go our way.”

As Wisconsin prepares to face the top-ranked Fighting Illini Tuesday at the Kohl Center, the boys in cardinal and white better hope this recent fling with Lady Luck doesn’t prove to be a one-night stand.