The seven-game skid is finally over after the Wisconsin women’s basketball
team (3-7) went on the road and defeated Drake (5-3) 60-49. Badgers head
coach Lisa Stone returned to the floor where she coached prior to Wisconsin. 

Senior guard Alyssa Karel scored 24 points to lead all scorers and senior
forward Lin Zastrow added another 15 points for the Badgers and notched 6
rebounds.

The Badgers will now get to return to the Kohl Center for an
in-state rivalry game versus the UW-Milwaukee Panthers (3-5).

The Panthers come to Madison on a three-game losing streak
and will search for a rare win against the Wisconsin. The Badgers lead the all-time series
between the two schools 19-1. The
lone win for Milwaukee was all the way back in 1992 when they edged Wisconsin
78-77 in Madison, but have dropped the last 12. 

Despite a worse record than Milwaukee, the Badgers have
played a much tougher early-season schedule than the Panthers and should be
well-prepared after facing ranked teams such as Duke and UW-Green Bay.

Milwaukee is headlined by senior forward Lindsay Laur, who
is averaging 17.4 points and 8.3 rebounds per game. Her skills in the post and outside the 3-point line make her
a difficult player to guard and when she gets to the free throw line she knocks
down 94 percent of her shots.

That type of threat could pose a real problem for the
Badgers because in the last seven games Wisconsin has committed 135 fouls and
allowed opponents to shoot 175 free throws. 

Although free throws have been an easy source of points for
the Wisconsin opposition the key to the game for the Badgers will probably be
turnovers. A major contributing
factor to many of the problems Wisconsin has endured this season has been the
inability to take care of the basketball. In its last five games UW is averaging about 20 turnovers per game.

“We have to take care of the ball and I think right now it’s
about being fearless on offense instead of worrying about making mistakes, just
playing with confidence,” assistant coach Oties Epps said.

Milwaukee also has two other double-digit scorers in freshman
guard Angela Rodriguez and freshman center Courtney Lindfors. Rodriguez leads the Panthers from deep,
shooting almost 40 percent from behind the arc and averages 13.3 points per
game. Lindfors is six-foot-four, leads the team in blocked shots and is chipping in
12.3 points per game.

The Badgers have three scorers in double figures to match
the Panthers. Those three leaders
also have experience that Milwaukee’s leaders don’t. Karell is averaging 14
points per game since returning from an injury that caused her to miss the
first three games of the season. She
is flanked by fellow senior leaders and forwards Tara Steinbauer and Zastrow,
who are each averaging 10 points and six rebounds per game.

Another key for Wisconsin is the team’s feel for each other that
is developing now that the Badgers have had all of its players healthy for the
last three games. 

“It might not show in the box score, but our chemistry is
coming. Things are going to start
to turn. I see it in practice, and
sometimes it just takes a little bit of time,” Epps said.

Sitting at 3-7 is not a comfortable position for any of the
Wisconsin players according to Steinbauer, but they aren’t panicking yet. The Badgers realize the impact the rash
of injuries had on the early part of the season and also know that the season
is just barely a month old with the entire Big Ten season left to play.

The UW-Milwaukee Panthers may not be a top team in women’s
college basketball, but that isn’t what the Badgers need right now to get back
on the right track. Wisconsin needs
to gather their footing and try to finish the non-conference schedule with
3-game winning streak, so that when the stronger opponents start to visit
campus they have some momentum.

“We definitely have some uphill road to climb in the future,”
Steinbauer says. “It isn’t enough
for us to say that we can compete with the best, we want to be able to win
against the best.

So far in a
season that has had anything but guarantees for the Badgers, Steinbauer just
gave one.

“This is not the way things are; come the end of the season
we will not be a team with a losing record,” she said.