The Wisconsin Badgers almost pulled off a major come-from-behind victory on Monday night against the Maryland Terrapins in College Park, but came up just short despite a strong second half that almost help them climb out of an early hole.
BadgerBlitz.com's Stat Pack from the game is included below.
-- I had a good chunk of the Stat Pack written at halftime, when the Badgers went in to the locker room trailing Maryland 33-15 after posting some abysmal offensive numbers in the first half. The game looked like it was all but over after UW shot just 27 percent (7 of 26) in the first half and put up 15 points - one more than the 14 points they scored in the first half of their loss to Minnesota less than two weeks ago. The Badgers started the game 0-for-8 from the 3-point line and committed seven turnovers in the first half alone, all while allowing the Terrapins to grab and early double-digit lead thanks to some hot 3-point shooting of their own (5 for 10 in the first half).
-- It was a similar formula we saw from UW on Friday night in their overtime loss to Purdue, when too many defensive mistakes and offensive misfires in the first half proved to be too much of a deficit to overcome. The Badgers knew they were looking for a fast start on Monday night, but it wasn't working out that way.
-- But then something clicked for UW: they started getting shots to fall in the second half. The Badgers missed their first two 3-point attempts in the second half, but then proceeded to make 11 of their next 20 shots from behind the arc in the second half. Nate Reuvers led the way for UW, hitting on 4 of his 7 attempts from long-range in the second half. He scored 18 points (a new career-high) in the game, and scored all of them in the second half.
-- D'Mitrik Trice and Brad Davison also combined to hit on five of 11 shots from the 3-point line in the second half, and even a slumping Aleem Ford got in on the action with one 3-pointer on two attempts.
-- Once shots started to fall, it made sense for UW to keep putting them up - they struggled to get consistent production near the basket on Monday night against Maryland's big front court, who limited Ethan Happ to just 10 points on 10 shots in the game as a whole. Happ also only played in 31 minutes after picking up a few fouls, so even though they probably got away from feeding the ball to Happ a little too early in the first half they didn't have a lot of options in the second part of the game.
-- The Badgers out-scored Maryland 45-31 in the second half by itself, thanks to the Terps shooting just 26 percent (5 of 19) from the floor after halftime. But they made the shots they needed to in order for them to squeeze out a narrow victory - Anthony Cowan hit a deep 3-pointer with 44 seconds left to give the Terps a 62-60 lead after the Badgers came all the way back to re-take the lead with two minutes left to play.
-- Wisconsin had chances to hit another go-ahead 3-point shot in the final seconds of the game, but their luck ran out when they needed it the most. Reuvers and Davison combined to take three shots after Cowan's 3-pointer, but the Badgers couldn't get any of those good looks to fall, and fell just seconds short of completing what would have been a stunning comeback.
-- In a way, Monday's game gave us a succinct look at this year's UW basketball team - it's hard to know what to expect from them on a night-to-night basis. That has to be frustrating for head coach Greg Gard, but this was not the first time this year we saw the Badgers working through some massive offensive struggles in at least one half of a game. The good news for UW is this time they were able to rally and re-take the lead at one point in the game, but in the end they couldn't keep Maryland in check forever while they whittled away at what was at most a 21-point lead.
-- One big thing the Badgers changed in the second half was their turnover rate - they turned the ball over seven times in the first half alone, but they had just one in the second half. That kept the Terrapins from seizing on extra mistakes like they did in the first half, when they scored 11 points off of UW's turnovers. The Badgers also forced the Terps to commit five turnovers of their own in the second half - and UW was able to score 11 points off of those turnovers as well.
-- Rebounding was definitely going to be a big focus for UW after Purdue cleaned up on the offensive glass in last week's win in the Kohl Center, and for the most part the Badgers held their own against Maryland's rebounding machines - the Terps only won the total rebounding battle 38-34, and the two teams each had 10 offensive rebounds. That's a silver lining for the game, but it won't take the sting out of coming so close to stealing a road win and coming up short for UW.
-- The Badgers could have definitely used a little more help from their bench in this game - they got just eight points out of the four bench players who rotated in to the game for UW, and in a game where Happ and some of his teammates were in foul trouble it's tough to not get much production while the starters are getting a breather.
-- Free throw shooting has been a minor nightmare for the Badgers so far this year, but it wasn't a big focus on Monday in large part because the Badgers had trouble even getting to the line. They attempted just six free throws in the game (they made three of them), while Maryland was 24 of 29 from the free throw line. That's a huge edge that the Badgers had trouble making up in the other phases of the game - although the Badgers haven't exactly been a team you can rely on to score consistently from the line this season even if they did get there a little more often.
___________________________________________________
John Veldhuis covers Wisconsin football, basketball and recruiting for BadgerBlitz.com on the Rivals.com network. Follow him on Twitter at @JohnVeldhuis.
