No. 3 Wisconsin (24-7, 15-5) vs. No. 14 Colgate (23-11, 16-2)

Game: Friday, March 18 inside Fiserv Forum

Time: 8:50 P.M. CT

Watch: TBS (Spero Dedes, Debo Antonelli and AJ Ross)

Listen: 1310 WIBA AM and 101.5 FM (Matt Lepay and Mike Lucas on the call); stream online on iHeartRadio

Prediction: Wisconsin 74. Colgate 65

Follow Online: The Badgers' Den

Twitter: @Badger_Blitz

After a lackluster start to the month, Wisconsin is looking to put together a special run when it matters most. That begins with matchup against the 14-seed Colgate Raiders inside Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee on Friday evening.

While the Badgers are entering the NCAA Tournament riding a two-game losing streak - their first of the season - Colgate is coming into Milwaukee as winners of 15 straight, the longest winning streak in the nation. Matt Langel's group punched its ticket to the NCAAs after three double-digit victories in the Patriot League Tournament.

What jumps off the page when scouting Colgate is its ability to shoot the ball. Langel's rotation is 10-deep with a unique ability to spread the floor. Six players in the rotation shoot it at least 35.9 percent from beyond the arc, and as Greg Gard put it when previewing Colgate, four or five players on the floor can shoot.

"When you're a good shooting team, typically you're a good passing team," Gard said Tuesday afternoon when meeting with the media. "Typically they go hand in hand... the ball moves really well. They don't over-dribble, they've got smart, old guys."

Connecting at a 40.3 percent clip from deep, Colgate ranks second in the country in that category and ninth nationally with 9.9 threes per contest. The backcourt of Nelly Cummings and Jack Ferguson will be the key defensive matchups for Wisconsin. Cummings leads the team in scoring at 14.5 a game and has tallied 20 or more points six times this season. Ferguson is coming off a conference tournament performance in which he averaged 20.7 points over the three games.

Though the Raiders average 76.1 points a game and get much of its offense from the perimeter, they don't necessarily get out and run. Colgate will slow it down and run offense in the half court with big Keegan Records as the focal point, either through a handoff or a touch inside.

For Wisconsin, its ceiling will likely depend on which version of Johnny Davis shows up. After leaving early against Nebraska in the regular season finale with a lower body injury, Davis went 3-of-19 from the field in the loss to Michigan State in the Big Ten Tournament. The first-team All-American has been a full participant in practices leading up to the matchup after being limited heading into the Big Ten Tournament.

Friday night will be just the second all-time meeting between the two schools with Wisconsin taking the lone matchup, 61-48, in 2011. If Wisconsin advances, it will face the winner of LSU against Iowa State on Sunday.

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