With a pair of former Badgers sitting behind the bench wearing their jerseys Saturday, senior guards Jason Bohannon and Trevon Hughes had one of the best combined performances of their careers.
Bohannon — whose jersey was worn by current New York Knicks forward Marcus Landry — put up a career-high 30 points while Hughes — whose jersey was the choice of Minnesota Timberwolves guard Alando Tucker — added 16 points, all in the first half.
Combining for 46 points, the UW senior captains helped No. 11 Wisconsin cruise past the Indiana Hoosiers in Saturday’s decisive 83-55 victory at the Kohl Center.
With the win, the Badgers managed to remain undefeated in games immediately following losses, as Wisconsin has yet to lose consecutive games during the 2009-10 season.
“We just hate the way it feels — we hate losing,” Hughes said. “The way we lose is when we get away from our game plan. If we stay in tune to that throughout the whole 40 minutes of the game, then we’ll be fine. That’s what we did.”
As they have several times this season at home, the Badgers quickly jumped out to a big lead over the Hoosiers. UW went up 8-0 in the first two minutes, 20-5 in the first six minutes and led by as many as 28 in the first half following a layup by Hughes with 2:55 remaining in the period that made it 46-18 in the Badgers’ favor.
The difference, though, between Saturday’s win and Wisconsin’s loss Tuesday to Illinois — a game in which the Badgers also led 8-0 in the opening minutes — was the ability of UW to maintain its hot start and to keep a young Hoosiers squad from getting back in it.
“You get that run, (and) you’ve got to sustain it,” UW head coach Bo Ryan said. “You’ve got to stay after it, and I thought we did a good job of that. They chipped away a little bit, but we got it back and then extended it again.
“It’s tough when you’re playing from behind, and we tried to make sure that we didn’t make it easy for them to chip into the lead.”
For the third time in four games, UW made more shots than it missed in the first half, as the Badgers shot 53.1 percent from the floor, including 46.2 percent from 3-point range. Six players scored in the period for Wisconsin, including Hughes, who led all scorers with 16 points at the break, and Bohannon, who had 14 first-half points.
Two of the most notable statistics for the Badgers in the first half were points off turnovers and points in the paint, both of which UW struggled with earlier in the week.
After putting up just six points in the paint and 11 off turnovers in 40 minutes against Illinois, UW had 18 in the paint and 14 off turnovers Saturday before halftime. When the final buzzer sounded, Wisconsin outscored Indiana 32-16 in the paint and 29-8 off turnovers.
Creating turnovers allowed the Badgers 20 more shot attempts than the Hoosiers, as Wisconsin made 32-of-63 attempts to just 20-of-43 for Indiana.
According to IU head coach Tom Crean, his defense simply was not good enough Saturday.
“We need to keep the ball in front of us,” he said. “We did a lot of different things defensively, and all we are doing right now is Band-Aiding. … We have done a good job of that at times this year, and right now we’re not. We have got to get that edge back.”
When asked about it after the game, Hughes also noted the Badgers focused more on defending ball screens and getting the ball in the paint offensively after struggling against both things earlier in the week. Combined with the Hoosiers’ difficulty in keeping the ball in front, Wisconsin’s aggressiveness sparked the offense Saturday.
After scoring 14 points in the first half to complement Hughes’ 16, Bohannon caught fire after the break, scoring 16 of his 30 points in the second half. His strong second-half play helped the Badgers maintain a big lead and even push it out to a game-high 35 points after the senior sharpshooter hit a three-ball with 6:29 remaining in the game.
Not one to speak highly of his own accomplishments, however, Bohannon credited his success to finding open shots and his teammates getting him the ball at the right time.
“A lot of them were off second-chance points,” he said. “I think our team did a very good job of rotating the ball and everything like that. … I was getting open shots and just had to knock it down.”
