Five Takeaways from No.12 Wisconsin's 69-63 Loss to Michigan State

INDIANAPOLIS – Speaking softly for the second time in six days on the press conference podium, Wisconsin senior Brad Davison doesn’t believe there’s any reason to be concerned about the state of the Badgers heading into next week’s NCAA Tournament.

UW’s play Friday in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals paints a different picture.

A team that hadn’t lost back-to-back games all season and rode a wave of momentum into March has suddenly lost its swagger, evident by No.12 Wisconsin’s lackluster performance in a 69-63 loss to seventh-seed Michigan State at Gainbridge Fieldhouse Friday.

Wisconsin (24-7) was hoping to become the 12th regular-season champion to win the tournament title that same year but instead will catch an early flight home after being bounced in their opening game for the first time since 2016.

Here are my five takeaways from Wisconsin’s loss.

After Jordan Davis missed a 3-pointer with two seconds left, Wisconsin finished at 36.7 percent from the field. The last time UW shot that poorly from the field was at Ohio State exactly three months ago.

The two recent losses are two different games but both performances showed the Badgers’ inability to finish around the rim. The Badgers were 13-for-20 around the basket in the loss to the Huskers and 11-for-20 against the Spartans.

Forward Tyler Wahl said it could be because the Badgers were playing in a new environment with different basketball than they are used to, but those excuses won’t be going away once the NCAAs start next weekend.

“We’ve just got to play better,” Wahl said. “We haven’t been playing too well recently. We got to get the ball moving around and just stop guys.”

There’s a lot of problems that have made Wisconsin look either really good or really bad in the last week. A big issue on Friday? Free throw shooting. Not only did Wisconsin not get there enough in the second half (seven attempts), the Badgers missed nine free throws for the first time since their road win at Northwestern on January 18.

“There’s a lot of things that we can look to offensive, defensively, (and) shots,” said Davison, who led all scorers with 23 points. “Shots aren’t always going to fall. Free throws aren't always going to go down at the rate that you want. We've just got to continue to stay confident, continue to get there. There's also a lot of other things that we could look at that we probably should have and could have done better to not be in this position that we're in now.”

Wisconsin isn’t going to win many games when Johnny Davis is off his game offensively. They certainly won’t win when Davis starts making bad decisions, two things that collided on Friday.

Fresh off being crowned the Big Ten Player of the Year, Davis delivered a clunker. The sophomore missed his first eight shots, went 1-for-10 in the first half, and finished 3-for-19, ending the night with 11 points.

Davis was emphatic throughout the week that he was going to play after aggravated an ankle injury in Sunday’s loss to Nebraska. He was limited in practice throughout the week, which appeared to affect his rhythm and timing.

His only basket in the first half came off an attack to the rim but missed the free throw to make it a 3-point play. He also had two points wiped off the board after an offensive foul. He scored on a designed play out of the under-16 timeout, receiving the inbounds pass following a hard cut and finishing at the rim through contact. The 3-point play gave Wisconsin its first lead at 32-30.

But Davis missed his last four shots, including three in the final minute, and was in and out of the lineup in the second half because of foul trouble.

Davis has helped rescue the offense several times in the past, but the sophomore appeared to be committed to attacking and missed opportunities to get the ball to open teammates in single coverage.

“Being the status I had coming into the game, I'm pretty sure their game plan was to try and take away those shots or contest those shots really hard,” Davis said. “I don't think I did a good job of dispersing the ball and finding my teammates, but a lot of those shots just were on me, rushed through them or just didn't get the look that I wanted to.”

Davis did finish with a double-double with his 11 rebounds, as well as adding three assists and a steal against three turnovers. If there’s one silver lining of the early exit is Davis will have more time to rest and get back into his normal practice routine.

“Getting into a rhythm will help him a lot,” head coach Greg Gard said. “It looked like he's been out of a rhythm in terms of what he's done in practice and he was because he was obviously working his way back from last weekend.”

Wisconsin entered the tournament 36th in the country in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency, the first time the Badgers ranked outside the top-20 in the metric since 2018’s non-postseason year. UW’s defense was a liability on Sunday but was a catalyst during the first half when the offense was struggling. Even though UW committed 10 fouls, the Badgers held Michigan State to 10 points in the paint, no offensive rebounds, and .750 points per possession.

Things started to go haywire early when the Spartans scored on their first three possessions to build a four-point lead, but the beginning of the end was UW failing to get back on defense after a Davison 3-pointer. That allowed Marcus Bingham Jr. to be wide open for a dunk and open the flood gates.

Starting with that bucket, Bingham ended up scoring 11 straight points for the Spartans, all in the paint, and four coming off offensive rebounds as UW couldn’t prevent him from getting to his spot or outmuscling him on the glass. That spurt allowed Michigan State to never trail the rest of the game.

“I thought there were times when we let him catch it too deep and too easy, didn't think we gave enough support to him and to his defender at times and squeeze him enough,” Gard said. “Then he got a couple offensive rebounds, we drug too far on ball screens on a couple of lobs, and he's obviously improved. He's got the jump hook down, he's active, he's long. He's made himself into a good player and he was better than what we were defensively there.”

After Maryland forced seven turnovers in the final 2:26 to pull within two points three times against the Spartans Thursday night, Wisconsin could only force Michigan State to commit one turnover in the second half and couldn't generate that big defensive stop to swing momentum.

“We just couldn’t get a stop on defense,” guard Chucky Hepburn said. “Hauser hit a big three that kind of gave them momentum (a 50-44 lead with 7:17 remaining). After that, we just couldn’t get a big stop.”

UW lost its second straight game decided by two possessions or less, a complete role reversal after the Badgers had reeled off 15 straight wins in games in that category from mid-November to March 1. While the focus will be on Wisconsin going 2-for-7 from the floor after CHepburn’s 3-pointer tied the game with 1:56 remaining, what the Badgers did in the 38 minutes prior to that set them up for failure.

More specifically, the Badgers' offense in the first 20 minutes was putrid. UW started 3-for-16, scoring on just three of its 17 possessions for an ugly .353 points per possession average, and only improved marginally by halftime. When UW entered the locker room, the Badgers were at 24.1 percent from the floor, missed all seven 3-pointers, and were 8-for-14 from the free-throw line.

They played a part in the second half when UW was constantly digging out of a hole, in part because its offense couldn't string together enough scoring possessions and the defense was struggling for stops.

“Usually in these close games we’re playing with a lead,” Wahl said. “Today we were playing from behind the entire game. That can definitely be a mental block. We finally got over the hump and then, boom, right back they score.”

Two early fouls caused Steven Crowl to play just five minutes in the first half and Gard to play its bench – primarily Chris Vogt and Ben Carlson – extended minutes in the low post. While both had seen an uptick with their play in recent weeks (Vogt in scoring, Carlson in rebounding), neither delivered much more than fouls.

Vogt committed three fouls in the first half and Carlson committed one, causing Gard to do more shuffling with his lineup and even put Crowl back on the floor for a time. With guard Lorne Bowman missing his sixth straight game with a non-COVID illness, according to UW, Gard even went smaller with guards Jahcobi Neath and Jordan Davis on the floor.

The end line was ugly: 1 point on 0-for-7 shooting, five rebounds, seven fouls, and one turnover. Michigan State’s reserves contributed 18 points.

Gard has stated point-blank that the players on his bench are there for a reason, that they have more work to do to log starter minutes. However, moving into the NCAA Tournament in games with officiating crews that won’t be Big Ten crews (likely meaning tighter called games), the starters have to be better at limiting fouls to prevent the bench from being forced to carry the offense.

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