Coming off an 88-78 upset win over No. 25 Iowa on the road, the Badgers (9-11, 3-7 Big Ten) will look to keep the momentum going when Illinois (13-8, 5-6) invades the Kohl Center Thursday.
The win over Iowa was the first time the Badgers have beaten a ranked team since the 2001-2002 season.
“I think we showed our abilities, but I told our team, we’re only as good as our next game, it’s imperative that we back up our efforts on Sunday,” head coach Lisa Stone said.
While Illinois does not bring a national ranking into Thursday’s matchup, the Illini are poised to make a run at the postseason with a sixth-place standing in the Big Ten. The 9-11 Badgers are also bracing for a late-season push that would keep them eligible for the WNIT or even the NCAA tournament if they manage to finish above .500 in the regular season and make a strong showing in the Big Ten tournament.
“It’s important more so for our seniors,” freshman center Danielle Ward said. “How everyone contributes so much and how much hard [work] we put into it, it would be a blessing to go to postseason and extend our season.”
First, Wisconsin must take care of business at home against the Fighting Illini, who have already knocked off the Badgers once this season, 79-66 in Champaign.
“We do have some revenge with them,” senior guard Stephanie Rich said. “It was nothing they did, it was all on us.”
Last year the Fighting Illini were only team the Badgers swept in the conference, but now Illinois is in a position to do the same thing to Wisconsin. Last year Illinois head coach Theresa Grentz recorded her first losing record, at 10-18, since the 1994-1995 season, which was her first year at the helm. Illinois, though, has already bested last year’s win total and has registered wins over three ranked teams in Louisiana Tech, UCLA and Purdue.
One reason for the Illini’s string of recent success is the play of senior forward Angelina Williams, who is second in the conference in scoring with 19.3 points per game and is third on the team in rebounding with 4.2 boards per game. She has scored in double figures in all but two games this season.
Against the Badgers in January, she netted a game-high 28 points while shooting 10-16 from the floor and 7-9 from the line. Williams was recruited by former Wisconsin coach Jane Albright to play for the Badgers, but the Chicago native opted to stay in state and play for Grentz, where she has blossomed into one the Big Ten’s most consistent scoring threats.
“You’re not going to stop a player like Angelina Williams, but we definitely can contain her,” senior forward Ebba Gebisa said. “[Williams] is almost unguardable in a sense because she has a tough fade-away jump shot that you can’t block, you can only hope that she misses it,” Rich said.
The other senior leader for the Illini is guard Tiffany Guthrie, who adds 15.9 points and 5.1 rebounds per contest. Guthrie and Williams have led the Illini in scoring in all but one game this season.
Other players have stepped up as well, including freshman forward Danyel Crutcher, who averages 6.8 points and paces the team with 6.5 rebounds per game. Junior point guard Maggie Acuna averages only 1.9 points per game for the Illini but leads the team in assists with 68 and steals with 51.
If the Badgers key in on Guthrie and Williams, that will lead to open opportunities for the complementary players to step up and produce. Illinois, like Wisconsin, is small in stature in the post, so it will rely on the strength of its guard play. Wisconsin may benefit from defending heavily in the post and allowing Illinois to take the long ball. As a team, Illinois doesn’t put up many 3-pointers, averaging only 2.5 per game, and ranks last in the conference in 3-point accuracy at 26.2 percent.
With six games remaining, which include road stops at Penn State, Minnesota and Purdue, the Badgers need to go 4-2 to finish with at least a .500 record overall.
“I think this is a big time of the year right now where teams can play their way into postseason or they can play their way out of postseason,” Stone said. “I hope we can play our way in.”
