The season lives on for the Wisconsin Badgers women's basketball team, as they defeated the Kentucky Wildcats 67-61 Thursday night in the third round of the WNIT.

"I am so proud of this basketball team," UW head coach Lisa Stone said. "[Kentucky] has got a great basketball team. Our players did the little things to get us the win, and that's what it takes." Wisconsin's tough defense down the stretch sealed the game, and its extra-chance opportunities proved to be the difference.

"It was obviously a very hard-fought game on both ends," Kentucky coach Mickie DeMoss said. "If I had to pick out one stat that just really killed us, we gave away too many offensive rebounds."

Just as she has for most of the season, junior guard Jolene Anderson led Wisconsin (21-12) in scoring with 22 points. She also snared seven rebounds. Fellow guard Janese Banks contributed a solid night offensively as well, scoring 16 points. Perhaps even more impressive, however, was Banks' 13 rebounds, including seven on offense. Thursday's performance earned Banks her third double-double of the season and the fifth of her career.

In a game that was back and forth for the majority of play, Wisconsin was able to answer every response by Kentucky (20-14), who never led by more than two points.

"You just can't let it get to you," Anderson said of the close game. "We just had to pull together. Kentucky is a great basketball team. I just think we came ready to play like we did on Sunday (against Arkansas State)."

"No one was rattled," Stone said. "At the end of the game, we knew we were going to win."

With just less than three minutes remaining in the game and trailing by one, the Badgers scored eight unanswered points to build a seven-point lead with a little more than a minute to play.

"We didn't flinch," Stone said. "We played to win. We dug down; we played defense; we got some good scoring opportunities and we made free throws down the stretch."

Fueling the run were two 3-point plays for Wisconsin. The first came from Ward, who, on the result, put the Badgers ahead by two.

"The ball went up, I went up and got it, and they called a foul," Ward said. "It was just something that the team needed. It was a really exciting moment; to get that 3-point play really helped the team keep its confidence going."

Less than a minute later, Banks followed with a 3-point play of her own, pushing the lead to five.

The Badgers limited the Wildcats' leading scorer Sarah Elliott, who is 6-foot-6, to just 10 points and five rebounds, both below her season average of 13.6 and 7.0 respectively. Stone mixed in a rotation of Ward and Caitlin Gibson on Elliott in the post defensively.

"We certainly wanted to go at her in the first half," Stone said. "We were running a combination of different people. Caitlin Gibson, certainly against Elliott inside, did a fine job inside of five minutes, keeping her off the block.

"To look at what we did with our post defense was excellent."

Elliott picked up two first-half fouls and only played 10 minutes before halftime, which forced Kentucky to change things up on both sides of the ball.

"We're used to Sarah getting into foul trouble," DeMoss said. "I was pleased with our bench play. I thought Lydia Watkins came in and gave us a little bit of a spark. Any time your big people pick up those early fouls, it not only disrupts you on the boards, but it also disrupts you offensively. We missed her scoring punch as much as we missed her rebounding."

Two other Wildcats scored in double digits: Sarah Mahoney, a junior guard, scored 13 to lead the team, and sophomore Carly Ormerod tallied 10.

For Wisconsin, forward Danielle Ward nearly notched a double-double, with 10 points and nine boards. Point guard Rae Lin D'Alie finished with eight points and was 6-for-6 from the free-throw line down the stretch, and forward Mariah Dunham added nine to accompany her seven rebounds.

The next game for Wisconsin in the WNIT will be Sunday at 1:30 p.m. against the Virginia Cavaliers. After a first-round bye, Virginia defeated Charlotte in the second round and South Florida on Thursday, winning both games by two points. Sunday's game, which will be played at the Kohl Center, will be yet another home game in the tournament for the Badgers, who are playing in their first WNIT tournament since 2000.