MADISON, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team won 21 games during the 2019-20 season, but it’s a reasonable expectation that the Badgers would have won more, maybe even nine more.

Winners of eight straight games and one of the Big Ten’s tri-champions in the regular season, the Badgers – ranked 18th in the country – were about to head to Indianapolis as the No.1 seed in the conference tournament when college basketball’s remaining four weeks of the season were canceled due to the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

So instead of adding to their haul, the Badgers will have to settle for a season in which they overcame tremendous adversity to deliver the 19th regular season Big Ten championship in school history.

Putting a cap on the season, and to try and quench our thirst for March basketball, BadgerBlitz will rank UW’s 21 wins from last to first in a three-part series. For our list, we considered when the victory came, who the win was against, where the victory happened and the overall importance of the victory.

After previous ranking wins 21 through 8 yesterday, today we list the top seven.

This was probably Wisconsin’s second-best road victory of the season in terms of the quality of opponent, marking the program’s third straight road victory over a power conference opponent and its second straight over a top-20 program.

Micah Potter had his finest game of the season when he scored 18 of his career-high 24 points in the first half and added 13 rebounds for his first of three double-doubles on the season. Brad Davison also added a double-double with 11 points and 13 rebounds as UW recovered from its only home loss of the season (71-70 vs. Illinois) to beat a team that had won 13 of its last 15 at home. UW’s defense was on point in hold the Nittany Lions to a season-low point total, as Penn State shot 27.6 percent in the first half (32.7 percent for the game) and scored only 12 points in the paint.

A formidable foe all season for Big Ten teams, Penn State tapered off down the stretch in losing five of six, finishing 21-10 and in fifth place in the league.

Sometimes winning ugly can yield pretty results. We’ll never truly know how beneficial this result could have been for the Badgers come tournament time, but the fact that Badgers gutted out a game in which they were far from perfect on either end of the floor helped propel them to a conference title less than a week later.

Held scoreless in his return to Williams Arena last month, Davison scored a team-high 20 points, Brevin Pritzl scored 15 points, including a critical 3-pointer in the final minute and Potter added 10 to help the Badgers survive on a night where it shot 39.7 percent from the floor and just 8-for-22 from 3-point range.

“I think you can kind of fall in love with the 3-point shots at times,” Davison said. “When they aren’t going in at the rate they have been, our motto is ‘gritty, not pretty.’ Sometimes you’ve got to find ways to win, especially in March. Survive and advance, everybody knows the motto. It starts now. Shots are going in, shots aren’t going in, you’ve got to find ways to win.”

In a game that included 40 fouls (29 in the second half), it was those key plays late that Wisconsin made that was the difference.

Trailing 66-64, Davison’s 3-pointer bounced off the rim, but Aleem Ford batted the loose ball back toward the perimeter. Davison and Minnesota guard Gabe Kalscheur both went for the ball, but it was Davison who outstretched his hand enough to tip it to D’Mitrik Trice near midcourt. Trice took one dribble, found Pritzl open near the Wisconsin bench and watched him bury the 3-pointer.

“That was a huge play,” head coach Greg Gard said, referring to Davison. “That’s a game-saving play by sacrificing his body and not afraid to stick his nose in.”

Trice's six assists and one turnover was big. Not only did he find Pritzl, Trice, off a ball screen, saw forward Isaiah Ihnen hedge out toward Nate Reuvers on the perimeter. That left Ford wide open in the corner, and Trice hit him as the junior cut to the rim for an uncontested dunk that proved to be the game winner.

“It’s a play we had in the back of our pockets and we executed on it,” Pritzl said.

Still needing a stop, something UW had only down four times in the previous 17 possessions, Reuvers made it count. After Daniel Oturu (game-high 26 points) scored over him the previous possession, Reuvers stood his ground as Oturu backed him down, didn’t lose positioning as he the Gophers forward pivoted and registered a game-altering block. Minnesota never got a good look to win the game after that.

Minnesota finished the year 15-16 and in 12th place in the Big Ten (8-12), the 22nd consecutive year finishing below the Badgers in the conference standings.

The first meeting between the schools Jan.24 served as one of Wisconsin’s humbling moments of the season, a pummeling both on the scoreboard and in the 42-16 rebounding disparity. On its friendlier home court, the Badgers landed counterpunches.

Buoyed by a defense that held the visitors to 38 percent shooting and opened the second half making six of its first nine shots, Wisconsin led by as many as 13 points and got a career-high 19 points from Ford. However, UW clinched the game by getting the fortuitous bounces on the glass, registering an offensive rebound on four consecutive possessions, and making its free throws.

The Badgers entered the night 293rd (out of 350 division-1 teams) in offensive rebounds with 8.36 per game, but Wisconsin secured 10 of them against Purdue to help make up for outrebounded by seven.

“It comes down to making those little extra-effort hustle plays,” Pritzl said. “Those late clock plays, that’s a game saver … By stopping momentum, kind of resetting our offense, that’s big for us because it helps us bring the clock down even more.”

Wisconsin went 19-for-20 from the line overall for a season-best 95 percent. Breaking it down further, UW went 15-for-16 in the second half and 8-for-8 in the final 28 seconds, helping the Badgers overcome not making a field goal for the final 5:38.

After not being tough enough against teams with bigger, physical frontcourts earlier in the conference season, the Badgers proved they were better equipped to counterpunch down the stretch.

Davison scored 14 points, but it was his two plays in the final 12.4 seconds that saved a victory from the jaws of defeat in the only regular season meeting between the eventual Big Ten co-champions. Stealing a possession by knocking an inbounds pass off inbounder Darryl Morsel with 12.4 seconds left, Davison fittingly stuck in the dagger with a 3-pointer from the corner to lift Wisconsin to the victory.

“The kid is a winner,” Gard said of Davison. “Just makes winning plays. Turn around and made another one.”

Lost in the story because of Davison’s shot was Wisconsin’s defense on Maryland senior point guard Anthony Cowan, who led the conference at the time in both free throws made (81) and attempted (107) but only attempted two (he scored 16 points but needed 14 shots to get there).

UW also showed that after letting a late lead slip away in a home game to Illinois six days previously, the Badgers showed a late-game grit that emerged multiple times over the final seven weeks of the season.

Wisconsin had won four straight games entering its only regular season meeting at Michigan, but three of the wins came at home (the road win was over last-place Nebraska) and the Wolverines were equally as hot. Those factors combined for one of the most satisfying victories of the season.

After being quiet in the scoring column the previous two games, Trice was the catalyst with 28 points – his most since Dec.21 - that included 5-for-6 from 3-point range. He wasn’t alone in scoring marksmanship. Ford (18 points, 8 rebounds) went 6-for-8 from the field and Potter (18) was 7-for-12 off the bench, as the Badgers shot 53.7 percent from the floor.

UW also went 11-for-23 from 3-point range, making at least 10 3-pointers in five straight games for the first time in 24 years.

The Badgers also handled road adversity perfectly. UW's 10-point halftime lead was whittled to two points in the first three minutes and change because of an 8-0 Michigan run. With a mix of attacking the low post and hitting four 3-pointers in a five possession stretch, the Badgers put together a 16-4 run. When the lead was cut back down to six, Trice hit a 3-pointer. When Michigan made another run to cut the lead to 70-67 with 3:02 remaining, Trice hit a 3-pointer. See a pattern?

UW did it two more times from the 1:27 mark to the :43 mark, responding to a Michigan bucket with one of its own the next possession.

"This group over the last 60-to-90 days, as I told them in (the locker room), 60 days ago this wouldn’t have been possible," Gard said. "We weren’t ready to come into this environment against a good team and finish out a game on the road. That shows the maturity and the leadership we have in the locker room with our older guys.”

Zavier Simpson scored a career-high 32 points on an eye-popping 14-for-22 shooting, but the Badgers made sure to limit the others. Leading-scorer Isaiah Livers was limited to just 3-for-10 shooting, Jon Teske was picked on by Trice and UW’s low-post players and the Wolverines bench managed only four points. The Wolverines scored 44 points in the paint but went just 3-for-10 from the perimeter.

So many things were going against Wisconsin entering this Saturday afternoon tilt. The Badgers were reeling after an ugly late-game loss at Iowa the Monday before, Kobe King had officially left the program mid-week, Davison was suspended for one game by the conference mid-week and the Spartans averaging over 77 points per game - had beaten UW eight straight meetings. None of it mattered.

Wisconsin led for 37 minutes, 49 seconds and earned its sixth Quadrant 1 win of the season, calming the waters for a program that had been navigating choppy seas. UW attacked the low post early and aggressively, getting eight consecutive points from Reuvers at one point and getting to the free throw line. UW scored 43 points before halftime – the most for the program since late December.

After UW built its lead to 18 points in the early minutes of the half, the Spartans went on a 17-2 run over 7 minutes, 26 seconds to cut the deficit to 50-47. Like they would show later in the win at Michigan and unlike losing a late 12-point lead in Iowa City, the Badgers slowly built the lead back to 11 with under eight minutes remaining. From there, UW relied on its defense to win a game

Michigan State torched Wisconsin in transition in East Lansing (19-7 edge) and were marginally better on the boards (41-32, 10-9 offensive glass). Because of the team defense, the Spartans had only 11 fast-break points and a minimal 37-34 edge on the glass, including just five second-chance points.

UW didn’t make a field goal over the last seven minutes and change but they didn’t see its lead dip below one possession until there was 0.2 seconds left on the clock.

“We got our ass kicked today that played for their coach, played for the school, played for each other,” Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. “That’s a great example of somebody reaching down, a group of people, and playing for their coach, their program and their school.”

Yes, there were more impressive wins over better teams this season, but none of those games won a championship. In fact, all the learning lessons from games six through two culminated in the second half of the regular-season finale. The Badgers played an ugly first half and dug a deficit as big as nine points in the second, but they delivered a comeback that netted them the school’s 19th Big Ten regular season championship.

After spending the previous three weeks finding his shot, Reuvers scored a team-best 17 points that included two points off an offensive rebound to give UW a 58-54 lead with 21 seconds left. UW only had six offensive rebounds, but five came in the second half and three in the final 5:09. Potter was responsible for a lot of them. Finishing with 14 points and 11 rebounds, Potter delivered a 3-point play, five rebounds (two offensive that led to six points), an assist and a steal in the final 6:52, all the while playing with four fouls.

Trice went just 2-for-10 from the floor and scored four points, but his driving layup with 1:18 remaining gave UW its biggest second-half lead at five points.

In addition to his 3-pointer off the feed from Potter, Davison – an 86 percent free throw shooter who missed two earlier free throws - calmly sank two free throws with 7.1 seconds left to make it a two-possession game.

Of course, none of it would have mattered if the Badgers didn’t tighten up defensively. After the Hoosiers took their largest lead at 46-37, Indiana only made one more basket the rest of the game – a 3-pointer with 55 seconds left to cut the lead to two. Indiana also went nearly six minutes without a point, a drought that helped the Badgers go on a 12-0 run to take control of the game.

As the final horn sounded, UW’s players spilled out to center court for a mosh pit hugs and high fives while Gard raised his arms in celebration and bear hugged his assistants. It was a euphoric celebration that spilled into the visiting locker room, an understandable scene considering everything the program had been through over the past 10 months.