MADISON, Wis. – Johnny Davis staggered into the media room, having a giddy Brad Davison put his arm around him, and proclaimed that he’s promptly going to his apartment and going to bed as soon as possible.

Trying to do something that hasn’t been done in a Wisconsin program in over 45 years evidently takes a lot out of a person.

Registering the largest comeback in Division-1 this season, No.22 Wisconsin – down 22 points near the end of a horrid first half – regrouped to begin chipping away before landing haymakers down the stretch in a 64-59 victory over Indiana at the Kohl Center Wednesday.

“We’re just tough and gritty,” Davis said. “That game, it’s not easy making a comeback like that.”

Not since beating Ohio State on January 5, 1976, had the Badgers emerged victorious after spotting their opponent a 22-point lead, but Wisconsin can seemingly do no wrong against the Hoosiers in Madison. Winning their Big Ten opener pushed their home winning streak to 19 games over the Hoosiers, who haven’t won in Madison since 1998. Put that another way, no scholarship player on Indiana’s roster has been alive to see its program win at Wisconsin.

“That’s why you schedule these tough games in November and December, so you can get some experience for March,” Davison said, referring to UW's challenging non-conference schedule. “We’ve done a great job facing really tough competition to prepare us for those moments. “Whether it’s trying to hold a lead or coming back from down, we’ve had a lot of experience so far.”

Here are my five takeaways from a historic night at the Kohl Center.

The Badgers took a 5-0 lead and closed the first half on a 5-0 run. In between was a whole lot of problems for Wisconsin. UW shot poorly from the perimeter (1-for-10) and was unsuccessful in converting under the rim (eight points). While averaging .78 points hurt, allowing Indiana to average 1.31 points was borderline embarrassing.

UW struggled with the pick-and-roll, allowing for uncontested layups at the rim. Indiana was aggressive in the lane, rebounding half of its 14 misses to score 11 second-chance points. The UW misses sparked transition opportunities for Indiana, which took advantage with nine points in that department. Shooting 54.8 percent from the floor and going 5-for-8 from 3-point range, Indiana scored on 61.3 percent of their possessions.

Head coach Greg Gard said he didn't recognize his team in the first half, saying turnovers, bad shot selection and not playing inside out was the problem offensively, which led to not getting set defensively and opening up confidence-building shots for Indiana.

“They load defensively to the ball really well, much like we do, and it’s hard to crack them on the first or second turn,” Gard said.

Johnny Davis delivering a ferocious slam dunk in the face of Trayce Jackson-Davis in the opening minutes of the game was likely the only offensive highlight for the home team in the first half. Davis had a team-high 11 points, but it took him 10 shots to get there and included off-balanced attempts that were not high percentage tries. Last week’s Big Ten Player of the Week, Davison went just 1-for-6 and had a minus-16 scoring ratio in his 17 minutes on the floor.

While Jackson-Davis wasn’t as dominant (6 points, 3-for-6), the other four Indiana starters scored between six and nine points. Indiana’s starting five outscored UW’s starting five 37-23.

Davison wouldn’t use “calm” to describe the locker room atmosphere after getting bludgeoned in the first half but said there was plenty of constructive conversation about what was going right and wrong … but mostly wrong.

“That’s the great thing about this team,” Davison said. “We’ve got a lot of voices. A lot of people are saying different things and trying to encourage, but also hold people accountable.”

Gard usually lets the players discuss in the locker room first while he talks with his coaching staff. When he entered the locker room, he liked what he was hearing.

“We needed to get back to our DNA of toughness and gritty,” Gard said. “We were on our heels a little bit.”

While Wisconsin came out with a better flow offensively, making consecutive defensive stops – critical to digging out of a 17-point halftime deficit – was missing. UW cut the lead to nine points at 13:24 and got one more back at 12:37, but the Badgers missed a free throw, a 3-pointer, and committed a turnover and the deficit swelled back up to 12 with 8:59 left.

Crunch time was a different story

Chris Vogt – who had not scored more than four points all season - delivered low-post buckets on three of four possessions to cut the lead to five with 5:05 left.

After Race Thompson ripped a rebound away from Tyler Wahl and converted the offensive rebound, putting Indiana up 59-53 with 3:08 remaining, UW drew fouls on the next two possessions (4-for-4 on free throws) to cut the lead to two. After Davison’s peskiness forced guard Xavier Johnson to lose the ball out of bounds, Davis hit a sliding 3-pointer off one dribble to put UW up 60-59.

“Once I hit that three, I knew we were going to win,” Davis said. “We had been playing solid defense the whole second half. They could barely get a shot off the final minute.”

The comeback itself was staggering but the play of Wahl and Chucky Hepburn over the last 61 seconds was phenomenal. Wahl was 2-for-7 from the floor but had a team-high 12 rebounds, three assists, no turnovers, and three blocks, one coming when he denied Thompson on a shot outside the paint and Patrick Stewart on the low block.

Hepburn had battled foul trouble and had missed all four of his field goals, some badly, but the true freshman drained four free throws in the final 23.9 seconds. UW went 8-for-8 from the line in the final three minutes and 15-for-18 for the game. Indiana was 3-for-9 from the foul line in the second half.

When the dust settled, Wisconsin allowed just three points in the final 8:59, closed the game on a 16-2 run, and scored the final 11 points. That’s incredible.

“it’s easier to play when you’re down because you get more aggressive, but I thought the reason we won was because of our defense,” Davis said. “We outscored them by 17 in the second half. That tells you right there why we won the game.”

At his Monday press conference, Gard was honest in his assessment that he still needed to learn more about the players on his bench, a rotation that is comprised of two sophomores and three players in their first year with the program. He learned a lot against Indiana, surprising considering rotational guards Lorne Bowman and Jahcobi Neath, and reserve forward Markus Ilver, were unavailable with a non-COVID sickness.

Vogt led the way with nine points off the bench, as he attacked the rim from the low block that we haven’t seen from him outside of practice. He also kept alive several possessions with his length to help UW seize momentum

“After that first and-one (with 15:36 remaining), kind of felt like the lid was off the basket and I could be a little more aggressive,” Vogt said. “Give credit to my teammates. They did a great job of finding me. I just felt like I got one go in, I felt like they couldn’t guard me.”

The work of Ben Carlson, Jordan Davis, and Carter Gilmore also has to be commended. Carlson played 20 minutes and had three points and four rebounds (two on the offensive glass, one leading to a Davis 3-pointer) while Gilmore chipped in two points in his four minutes.

Jordan Davis was the lone reserve guard who played, delivering a 3-pointer and aggressive defense in his 12 minutes on the court when Hepburn had to sit because of foul trouble. Making the performance even better was that Gard admitted he had given some extra minutes to Jordan Davis in practice as Neath continued to knock some rust off after missing time with various injuries.

“Defensively, getting rebounds and just bringing energy,” Davison said of Jordan Davis. “We knew we had a lot of guys out. We always say our strength is in numbers. Jordan did a great job helping us off the bench to take a load off a little bit.”

The starting guards still played a lot of minutes (Johnny Davis played almost 37 and Davison nearly 34) but the Badgers don’t win without their bench.

Indiana entered the night third in the league in scoring (80.4) and second in field goal percentage (49.6), largely because Jackson-Davis is tremendous. He was averaging 21.0 points (3rd in B1G), 8.6 rebounds (5th), shooting 64.4 percent from the floor (2nd), and contributing 3.5 blocked shots per game (1st; 5th nationally).

But for only the second time in 34 games, Jackson-Davis failed to reach double figures. Finishing with nine points and six rebounds, Jackson-Davis only attempted four shots in the second half, only attempted two foul shots for the game, and saw his team outscored by 11 points when he was on the floor.

UW was trapping a lot in the first half and saw Indiana have 11 assists on its 17 baskets. In the second half, the Badgers relied on one-on-one defense from Carlson, Crowl, and Vogt in the post with help defense from the guards to take away space. The result was only seven field goals for the Hoosiers and three assists, taking away production from Thompson (2-for-6 second half) and Johnson (1-for-10 second half)

“He’s a tough cover,” Gard said. “He got Steve (Crowl) in foul trouble. We just had to make the catches as tough as possible. We were better with ball pressure … I thought we did a decent job of crowding him when we weren’t doubling him.”

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