MADISON — Late into March basketball, the Badgers are still finding different ways to win games.

Wisconsin rolled past Bradley with relative ease in the first round of the NIT. If not for Steven Crowl hitting a very uncharacteristic 5-of-7 triples, however, the Badgers may very well have lost, because the rest of the team shot 3-of-18 from downtown.

Long-range shooting has been a concern for this team as of late. Wisconsin’s two most productive shooters from deep, Chucky Hepburn and Connor Essegian, have been ice cold from three for about a month. Since the Rutgers game on Feb. 18, Essegian is shooting 17.8 percent from deep. Hepburn hasn’t fared much better, posting a 20.6 percentage from three.

These issues were bound to be problematic if they continued into the second round of the NIT, which saw the Liberty Flames and their highly potent offense roll into the Kohl Center. Three-point shooting has been a staple of what Wisconsin has done for the better part of the season, and floundering from deep against an offense as explosive as Liberty’s was sure to spell doom, no?

Not quite. Despite making just one three-pointer, which came in the waning minutes of the second half, the Badgers pulled out a second round win to advance to the NIT quarterfinals and keep their season alive.

With the game neck-and-neck down the wire, Wisconsin seemingly couldn’t buy a three. They had several go in-and-out, including a particularly baffling corner three from Hepburn across from his bench.

“That one that Chucky had that came right at me, we may have to measure the rims to make sure the diameter is still right because that touched every part of the rim and wiggled out,” Greg Gard joked after the game.

Still, the his message to the team was to stay positive and not lose faith in their long-range stroke.

“Keep shooting,” Gard continued. “If you have good (looks), keep shooting them and don’t let that impact your confidence.”

“When the three-pointers aren’t falling, that’s when we really have to lock in on defense,” Hepburn offered. “If we lock in on defense, we can get out and push in transition and get in the post. I think we did a good job of that today, getting in the post and scoring in the paint.”

For the most part, Wisconsin played sound basketball. By the final whistle, its points-per-possession was at 1.21. They shot 20-of-24 from the charity stripe, an area that they had struggled in earlier this season. They were working the ball into the paint, and finished the game 14-of-20 on layups. And yet, the zero in the three-pointers category loomed large as it became clear Wisconsin would need clutch plays down the stretch.

“Not really,” Gard said plainly when asked if it felt like the Badgers would need to get at least one or two threes to fall in order to pull out a win.

“I mean, as long as they’re good shots, and you’ve got the proper guys taking them…Chucky and Connor have a pretty bright green light, so they have to make decisions.”

Wisconsin began the game by immediately taking advantage of the clear and obvious height disparity. Crowl had 10 of the Badgers’ first 14 points as he relentlessly challenged the undersized Flames in the paint. Then, he got a flagrant technical foul for appearing to shove a Liberty player to the ground while battling for position down low. That would be his third foul of the game with just over one half of basketball still to be played. Wisconsin would have to find another source of scoring apart from Crowl in the post, which was almost automatic at that point.

“Obviously getting Steven in foul trouble took us away from playing through him as much as we typically would,” Gard said. “But other guys stepped up.”

Other guys did in fact step up, led by Hepburn who posted a career-high 27 points. Despite not being able to find his shot from deep, Hepburn went to work against the Flames’ smaller guards and got to his spots in the paint off the dribble-drive.

Max Klesmit also made some enormous plays down the stretch. The Badgers finally hit a three with 2:09 left in the game, on a nice step-back look from Klesmit. On an afternoon in which no one could find the bottom of the net from deep, even the one made triple felt like a monumental shot.

“The one Max had was huge,” Gard said. “He was able to get his guy to drop his hands a bit and rock him back, walk him back.”

Klesmit’s three was a massive shot to give Wisconsin a one-point lead with just over two minutes, but Liberty came right back and scored on their next possession. The job wasn’t done, but neither was Klesmit.

On a play off a timeout with 48 seconds left, Klesmit got the ball on a handoff and took it to the rack, getting a layup to fall high off the glass with his left hand. Those were his first two scores of the game, and they couldn’t’ve come at a better time.

“(Klesmit) had some big buckets for us down the stretch,” Hepburn said. “I knew Liberty was kinda looking for me to go attack, and I knew Max would be able to go create some kind of shot, cause he’s Max and I know he’s been able to do that all season. We all have trust in him and confidence in him to do that.”

The Badgers survived Liberty and survived their worst showing from downtown all season to advance to the NIT quarterfinals. By winning the first two rounds of the tournament, Wisconsin logged their first consecutive victories since Jan. 3.

“It does feel good to get back-to-back wins,” Crowl said. “It’s been a little bit. It just feels good to still be playing.”

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