The No. 18 University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team (26-9, 13-7 Big Ten) fell at the final hurdle of the Big Ten Tournament, losing to the No. 22 Michigan Wolverines (25-9, 14-6) 59-53 at the Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Despite the loss, the Badgers earned a No. 3 seed in March Madness, two spots higher than their No. 5 ranking last season, and will play Montana in the first round Thursday, March 19 at 12:30 p.m.
Sophomore John Blackwell led the Badgers with an 18-point, 5-rebound performance, while senior Max Klesmit dropped 12 points, despite going 2-for-10 from the 3-point line.
Klesmit was not the only Badger that struggled to shoot against the Wolverines, a stark contrast to the recent performance against UCLA, when the team scored a Big Ten-record 19 3-pointers. Grad student John Tonje went 0-for-5 from three, 1-for-14 from the field and only dropped nine points, his first performance under 10 points since he went scoreless against USC in January.
As a team, the Badgers shot 7-for-39 from three, only 17.9%, the team’s worst 3-point shooting performance since the loss to Michigan State earlier this month. The 53 points were also the fewest the team has scored this season, which speaks to the defensive effort by the Wolverines to shut the Badgers down.
The first half was low-scoring, with Blackwell scoring what were the final points of the half on a layup with 2:30 to go. In the first half, the Badgers held the Wolverines to 28% from the field but only shot 21% themselves as Tonje and the team failed to get into a rhythm heading into halftime.
But, the Wolverines were the ones who went cold entering the second half, as the Badgers jumped to an 11-point lead seven minutes into the second half, which would end up being their largest lead of the game.
The Wolverines never ran into a big lead in the matchup, but hung with the Badgers and struck when it counted most, during the final few minutes. After going down by 11, the Wolverines went on a 7-0 run, cutting the Badgers’ lead to four with 11 minutes to go.
Thanks to back-to-back layups from Wolverine junior Danny Wolf and misses by Klesmit and Tonje, the Wolverines tied the game at 45-all with under six minutes to play. Points were hard to come by for both sides, but back-to-back misses by Tonje and Blackwell forced the Badgers to begin fouling.
The Wolverines were clinical from the stripe, scoring six straight free throws to take the game from tied at 53 to giving Michigan the win, 59-53.
Keeping an eye on the record books, grad student Steven Crowl grabbed six rebounds against Michigan, bringing his total to 846 career rebounds as a Badger and cracking the top-5 all-time rebounds at Wisconsin. Crowl only needs 11 rebounds to pass Mike Wilkinson (2002-2005) in fourth place, and 13 rebounds to pass Joe Franklin (1966-1968) and enter the top three.
Tonje also has the opportunity to retain some records he currently holds and bolster his stats to earn more. He holds the all-time record for highest free throw percentage (minimum 175 attempts) with 90.8%, ahead of Rick Olson’s (1983-1986) 87%.
Tonje also sits third in single-season scoring with 704 points, only 13 points behind Alando Tucker (2007) and 29 behind Frank Kaminsky (2015).
Looking ahead, the Badgers have to shake off their second-consecutive loss in the Big Ten Championship finals, with the pain of a 93-87 loss to Illinois in last year’s Championship game still stinging.
What stings even more, though, is last year’s March Madness first round loss to James Madison, which the Badgers will look to avenge with a first round matchup against Montana this season.
The Badgers have three days of rest and preparation for their opener against Montana.
