If the last two games serve as the totality of the sample size, it’d be safe to declare the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team as a second-half squad.

No. 15 Wisconsin (17-3, 6-1 Big Ten) followed a road overtime win over Minnesota with a 82-55 victory over Penn State (11-10, 3-5) at the Kohl Center Tuesday night.

UW saw an early 10-point lead established during the first six minutes and 30 seconds of the game nearly evaporate by halftime, when it led 36-33. In the second half, Penn State’s shooting cooled off and UW’s heated up, when Wisconsin shot 55 percent compared to PSU’s 27 percent.

Wisconsin Player of the Game: Bronson Koenig

Bronson Koenig was his usual self Tuesday night, pacing the Badgers with a consistent scoring effort and a mixture of buckets in the paint and 3-pointers. He finished with 20 points on 8-of-13 shooting. Koenig made all of his shots from inside the 3-point arc and went 4-for-9 from three.

Koenig added two rebounds and three assists.

Penn State Player of the Game: Tony Carr

Tony Carr and Payton Banks each scored 12 points to lead Penn State. Carr’s efficiency, 4-for-7 overall from the field and 2-of-2 from three gives him the edge here. Carr also led his team in assists (four), minutes played (32) and steals (two).

Honorable Mention: Vitto Brown

It’s not like Brown was absent during the first half, scoring seven of his 16 points during the game’s first 20 minutes, but his presence was especially felt in the game’s second frame. After a bad turnover, Brown dialed up his intensity — scrapping for loose balls and fighting for offensive rebounds the rest of the night.

Brown did not miss a shot in the second half, going 4-for-4. He also hit on both of his 3-pointers. Overall, Brown was 6-for-8 from the field and accumulated six rebounds, with three of those coming on the offensive glass.

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Turning Point: First five minutes of the second half

The first half was uninspiring for the Badgers. They had shot just 39 percent from the field. This season, Penn State is 7-0 when holding opponent under 40 percent from the field. Luckily for UW, found its hot hand early in the second half.
Happ scored two quick buckets inside after going 1-for-5 in the first half. Three-pointers from Koenig, Zak Showalter and Brown fueled a 16-5 run that led to a 52-38 lead and UW kept PSU at bay the rest of the game.

When You Knew It Was Over: Khalil Iverson’s dunk, 3-pointer

The sophomore forward and Koenig caught the PSU defense sleeping when Koenig lofted an inbounds pass from under the basket to Khalil Iverson, who tomahawked the ball through the cylinder. That surely got the UW bench fired up.

Following a D’Mitrik Trice lay-in , Trice fed Iverson for a 3-pointer from the left wing in front of the Badger bench. Iverson connected and gave UW its largest lead of the night, 62-41, with 9:21 to go.

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Notes

• Penn State has never won in Madison. Tuesday night’s loss drops the Nittany Lions to 0-18 in Madison and 0-15 in the Kohl Center.
• Wisconsin has now won 22 of its last 24 games over Penn State.
• Koenig’s 20 points places him 21st on the UW all-time scoring list, passing Joe Franklin and Kammron Taylor on Tuesday. It was the sixth time this season Koenig has scored 20 or more points.
• UW tied its season-high in free throw attempts at 29, the first of which came at Marquette.

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Quotable

Penn State head coach Patrick Chambers on Wisconsin pulling away during second half: “They made a bunch of shots early [in the second half]. They scored in bunched. Again, we need to learn how to respond to runs by great teams. I don’t think we responded like we normally have.”

Brown on his knee injury affecting his play: “I’m not going to use that as an excuse for my lazy play against Minnesota. That was definitely a point of emphasis for me. What the coaches told me to do was go out there and play with a lot more energy.”

Ethan Happ on offense rolling: “Anytime you’re hitting shots from the outside it obviously helps. Most times what opens that up is us to produce on the inside. We didn’t do that as much in the first half and we tried to make that a point of emphasis in the second half. That opened up a lot of shots for our guys and they were knocking them down.”

Greg Gard on transition defense in the first half: “It’s one thing if they come down and hit a three that’s highly contested. But we had totally lost guys in transition. Typically we just didn’t communicate well enough in transition, or we subbed – who had who – they had subbed, we had not done a good job of matching that up and aligning with who we had. We had to address those issues then and we addressed them at halftime and obviously got things much better figured out.”