MADISON, Wis. – A young Wisconsin team - without its leading scorer - trailed for nearly 31 minutes and only had two players score more than five points against a team that was, on average, three years older than they were. It was a tough task already, made even harder as the night went on for the Badgers because of fouls and missed shots, a lot of them.

The 63-58 victory for Providence at the Kohl Center Monday wasn’t all surprising. UW only had two players (Brad Davison – 25; Tyler Wahl – 16) score over five points, the Badgers shot 32.8 percent as a team, and didn’t have the services of leading scorer Johnny Davis due to a lower-body injury.

However, a young Badgers squad still had chances down the stretch to pull one out of the fire. It’s encouraging moving into the rest of the season, starting with three games in three days starting next Monday in Las Vegas.

Here are my takeaways from the Kohl Center

It’s no secret that Wisconsin is working on limited depth in the frontcourt, as the Badgers need time to develop young forwards in wake of graduation and transfers. That’s why the three combined fouls of Steven Crowl and Chris Vogt over a two-minute stretch midway through the first half changed the course of the game.

Crowl wasn’t providing much offensive pop but his presence in the middle of the lane to deny and front the post were important against the size of Providence’s veteran lineup. He picked up his second foul with 9:51 left off a deadball rebound, forcing him to the bench and Vogt to enter. Already with one foul, Vogt picked up two more by the under eight-minute timeout on bang-bang plays and had to sit.

UW was up six when Crowl went out, up two after the made free throws from Vogt’s foul, and entered halftime down 11 because the Friars relentlessly attacked Ben Carlson (not a legitimate No.5), Carter Gilmore, and the basket. Of the 14 points in the paint Providence scored in the first half, eight came over the final 9:11.

“We had to go back to square one,” Davison said of missing Crowl and Vogt. “Guys did a great job trying to fight. There is some size that you can’t make up for. We wanted to try to make it difficult for him to catch and make his points as difficult as they can be. Difficult first half with our guys on the bench.

Head coach Greg Gard never considered putting Crowl back on the floor, just hoping to get to halftime without more foul trouble. In addition to the points in the paint, the Friars scored 10 of their 14 second-chance points during that stretch to take a lead it would not relinquish.

“We dug ourselves too much of a hole in the first half with some second-chance points and some turnovers that led to fouls,” Gard said. “It was a double whammy with some of those live-ball turnovers.”

It was revealed shortly before tip that Davis, who leads the team with 15.0 ppg, was not going to play with a lower-body injury. Gard said after the game that Davis did not practice in the two days leading into Monday’s game and he was eventually ruled out during warmups.

With guard Jahcobi Neath (lower body) missing his second straight game and the foul trouble in the low post, the Badgers were left with experienced players Davison, Wahl, and a lot of underclassmen to take on a team that started three graduate students, a senior and a fourth-year junior. There was no question that it messed with the flow offensively.

“It’s next man up mentality,” Davison said. “We knew we were going to be able to compete no matter who was in the jerseys.”

Even with the sizable gap in experience listed above, the Badgers still had open looks, a lot of them. In what may have felt like a bad flashback to last season for some, Wisconsin missed a lot of high-quality shots that could have put them over the hump as it chipped an 11-point halftime deficit down to five multiple times in the second half.

It was a combination of rushed shots or bypassing open shots that caused UW to shoot 25.9 percent in the first half. UW was better in the second half, shooting 38.2 percent, but went just 2-for-14 on 3-point looks.

“I thought we had a lot of really good looks,” Davison said. “Personally, I thought a lot of mine were going in. they just didn’t hit the bottom of the net. I thought Tyler had some great looks. Ben had some great looks in the first half. Everyone got great looks. There’s just some days when the ball doesn’t go in. Very confident in the shots we were getting. I thought we were getting good shots inside, too. Just got to convert them.”

As Davison alluded to, Carlson was snake bit. In his 15 minutes on the floor in the first half, largely due to foul trouble, he was 0-for-6 from the floor and 0-for-3 from three point range. He wasn’t alone, as Chucky Hepburn (1-for-5), Lorne Bowman (0-1), and Carter Gilmore (0-2) didn’t provide offensive before halftime. Of the 23 points UW scored in the first half, 20 were scored by Davison and Crowl.

“I think this is the first time (Carlson) has seen this type of physicality,” Gard said. “Playing with a better base, feet wide apart, slowing down … Like everybody, he shoots it better when he comes inside out versus perimeter reversal. For all these guys, other than Brad and Tyler, this is the first real taste of this, one of these types of games.”

The Friars came in averaging 86 points per game (89 if you include their exhibition game) and were shooting 53.7 percent from the floor. The Badgers held them to 63 points and 40.7 percent shooting. Leading-scorer Nate Watson (18.0 ppg) had 24 points but only eight in the second half and had a plus/minus ratio of minus-8, a team-worst in the final 20 minutes.

“Our defense gives us a chance to win every game that we are in,” Davison said. “This is probably one of the best defensive teams I’ve been on in my four years. The second half performance on Watson by our big guys was amazing.”

It was evident Wisconsin settled down in the final 20 minutes, getting its full rotation back on the floor and letting the initial shock of Providence’s aggressiveness wear off. The Friars had 15 turnovers against UW, including grabbing four fewer offensive rebounds and making two fewer shots in the second half.

Wisconsin usually isn’t a program that will hang its hat on silver linings in losses, but this was a big step up in competitiveness from the mid-majors the Badgers faced last week.

There’s little question to me after three games that the Badgers are going to be a group that relies heavily on their defense and will need to play solid on that end to have a chance against teams who have more experience (and talent) than they do. The group also didn’t fold, something that’s going to be valuable heading into the Maui Invitational and for the games beyond that.

The question is can this group take what it learned and apply it, considering this is the start of a challenging stretch of eight games against quality opponents? We'll find out Monday against Texas A&M.

_________________________________________________

*Chat about this article in The Badgers' Den

*Check out our videos, interviews, and Q&As on our YouTube channel

*Subscribe and listen to the BadgerBlitz.com podcast (as seen on Apple, Google, Spotify and wherever you listen to podcasts)

*Follow us on Twitter: @McNamaraRivals, @JakeKoco, @TheBadgerNation, @RaulV45

*Like us on Facebook