The Badgers are climbing on up.
Wisconsin jumped one spot, into a second place tie with Penn State, in the Big Ten women’s basketball standings Thursday night at the Kohl Center with a 62-41 win over the Northwestern Wildcats.
The win, coupled with a loss by previously first place Penn State, puts Wisconsin (14-10, 9-3) only one-half game behind Michigan State with four games remaining in the regular season.
The Wildcats came to the Kohl Center looking for their third straight victory since losing 11 days ago in Evanston to the Badgers. Yet, they left in much worse shape than they could have anticipated.
Wisconsin held Northwestern to a season-low in points, as the Wildcats shot only 32.1 percent from the field and a dismal 15.8 percent from behind the three-point line on 3-of-19 shooting. The 41 points were nearly 29 points below the Wildcats’ season average of 69.4 points per game.
“Everybody in the league can beat everybody depending on the day, but tonight, we couldn’t beat Wisconsin,” Northwestern head coach Joe McKeown said. “They just outplayed us.”
Coming off her fourth Big Ten Player of the Week honor, after averaging 25.5 points per game in Northwestern’s two February victories, senior forward Amy Jaeschke was held to 15 points on 7-of-15 shooting.
The Badgers curtailed Jaeschke’s play by constantly double-teaming her with Wisconsin senior forward Lin Zastrow and any guard in the area to help. The double-teams often left Northwestern with open shooters and Jaeschke did a good job finding them, but her teammates consistently failed to make shots.
“Jaeschke is a handful. She is one of the best players in the country and her accolades are well deserved but when she meets Lin Zastrow, it’s a match,” UW head coach Lisa Stone said.
Alongside senior guard Alyssa Karel’s 19 points on 6-of-8 shooting, including 3-of-5 from downtown, Zastrow paced the Badgers on both the offensive and defensive ends of the floor. She finished the game with 17 points on 7-of-11 shooting, while converting both of her three point attempts.
Karel and Zastrow are the Big Ten’s No. 1 scoring tandem, averaging over 32 total points per game, and Zastrow also leads the league in field goal percentage, shooting an impressive 55 percent from the floor.
“They are both obviously all-conference players,” McKeown said.
About five minutes into the second half, Zastrow attempted her second three-point attempt and was fouled by Jaeschke at the top of the key as she watched the ball swish through the net. Zastrow converted the free throw to complete the four-point play.
“I thought it was going to be an airball short, but it had good arch, so when it went in I was like, ‘Cool I never had one of those.'”
The Badgers used two large scoring runs – one in each half – to really put the brakes on the Wildcats. The first half saw Wisconsin tally off a 19-2 run to take a 29-13 lead with less than four minutes to go in the half, but Northwestern made it close by hitting three jumpers and one last second heave at the buzzer to make it 33-22 at the break.
Wisconsin also had hot shooting from sophomore guard Taylor Wurtz, who went 4-of-4 from the field with eleven points, hitting three triples in the first half.
Shortly after the break, Stone was forced to take an early timeout as the Wildcats closed the gap down to six points not even three minutes into the half.
Thanks to the dominating second half performance, 12 different Badgers were able to see floor-time, albeit in a fairly pressure-free situation.
“You cannot allow a team like Northwestern to gain confidence,” Stone said. “We gave them a little glimmer of confidence to start the second half.”
The timeout appeared to be what the Badgers needed, clamping down on defense and only allowing Northwestern to score 14 points over the final 17-plus minutes, which also included a 13-0 run by Wisconsin.
“When we made a run and got it down to six or seven in the second half they stepped up and made plays,” McKeown said.
