Life without star forward Tara Steinbauer officially began Saturday afternoon in the Kohl Center, where the Badgers took on the Michigan Wolverines to try to avenge a 16-point loss earlier in the season.
The stakes were high, as Wisconsin was battling to stay in the race for the Big Ten title following a deafening blow at Iowa Wednesday, where they lost the game and Steinbauer to a torn ACL in her right knee.
Unfortunately for the Badgers, a season-long theme has pervaded that when there are injuries, they just haven’t been able to get the victories they needed. Wisconsin suffered seven of its 12 losses early in the season thanks to the overlapping injuries of forward Lin Zastrow and guard Alyssa Karel.
Now, the Badgers have dropped their last two without Steinbauer, after falling to the Wolverines Saturday, 68-66.
“I thought our team responded very well,” head coach Lisa Stone said. “There was a bounce in their step, there is a commitment to each other, there is some energy to play for each other and that is encouraging to me, so we move forward.”
It may be tough to move much further ahead in the standings, however. With just two games remaining in the regular season, Wisconsin is now two games out of first place, and it seems unlikely that Michigan State would lose their last three games in a row to leave the door open for the Badgers.
Without Steinbauer in the lineup and now a two-game losing streak, all the momentum that Wisconsin had barely a week ago seems to be all but gone. Knowing Steinbauer won’t be back will now put a lot of pressure on reserve forwards Anya Covington and Cassie Rochel.
Covington and Rochel shot a combined 3-of-3 from the floor and controlled four rebounds, but compared with Steinbauer’s consistent production of 10.5 points and 5.5 rebounds per game, the Badgers are not the same. Even worse, the real disparity comes on the defensive end.
From the opening tip, it was even clearer that the combination of Steinbauer and Zastrow has been the key to Wisconsin’s pack defense, as they have dominated the paint. Saturday’s game was only the third time all season that the Badgers allowed over 30 points in the paint. The first time was at No. 17 UW-Green Bay and the second was at No. 11 Michigan State, when Zastrow was missing from the lineup. All three occurrences have ended with a loss for UW.
No one player made the absence of Steinbauer more apparent than Michigan sophomore forward Rachel Sheffer, who entered the game averaging 9.8 points per game. Not only did she score more than double that average, she almost doubled it in the first half with 18 points and 15 of Michigan’s first 20. Sheffer finished with 22 points after Wisconsin made a strong second half adjustment.
“[Sheffer] hit a bunch in the first half and in the second half they did a major adjustment and pretty much shut her right down and frustrated us for a great percentage of the second half,” Michigan head coach Kevin Borseth said. The hole in the roster also caused quite an interesting shift in the starting lineup. Senior guard Emily Neal got her first start of the season on what happened to be Senior Day, after struggling to find playing time during the heart of the season thanks to a broken nose suffered in January.
“I thought Emily Neal gave us a great spark today,” Stone said. “She had some patience and poise and knocked some shots down and a turnover here and there, but bottom line is she gave us a really needed spark in Tara’s absence.”
Neal finished with seven points on 2-of-4 shooting including a three-pointer for the first three points of the ball game. She also chipped in two assists and two rebounds in her 21 minutes, the most she has played since being on the floor for 25 minutes in an overtime loss to Kansas in late November.
