MADISON, Wis. – Maryland represented the eighth team who entered the Kohl Center with an 8-0 record or better since 2000. The Terrapins are flying back home as the seventh team from that list with a loss.

Wisconsin posted its first win over a ranked opponent on the season by getting plentiful scoring from up and down the roster and clogging up the middle of the Terrapins' offense to put another close game into their win column.

“The strength of our schedule, who we play, where we had to play … these guys have gotten a lot of experience (with) their feet to the fire, which is what we needed,” head coach Greg Gard said. “It forces growth when you have to really buckle down and play.” The victory marks the 18th time in the last 20 years that the Badgers (7-2, 1-0 Big Ten) open conference season with a win.

Here are my takeaways from the Kohl Center.

Wisconsin debuted at No.75 in the NCAA NET rankings on Monday, a surprising number to some considering the Badgers’ challenging early schedule but a number bogged down by the three-point home loss to Wake Forest (currently considered a Quadrant 3 loss). UW gave up 36 points in the paint and 53.7 percent shooting in that loss and marginally improved when it gave up 34 points in the lane and 50.9 percent shooting in Saturday’s overtime win against Marquette.

On Tuesday, it was significantly better.

Wisconsin held Maryland to 35.5 percent (11-for-31) on two-point field goals and just 3-for-9 on layups, outscoring them 24-18 in the lane. Maryland was averaging 80.8 points with four players in double figures on its undefeated start but was held to a season-low 59 points with only one of those four players surpassing their scoring average.

Wisconsin held Maryland to under a point per possession each half, 29 on 31 possessions in the first half and 30 on 34 in the second.

“That tells me from an efficiency standpoint on the defensive end, we were doing some good things,” Gard said, as Wisconsin became the first team to hold Maryland under 40 percent shooting (38.2). “We controlled the tempo. We did a good job of making them play against our set defense, which is always a goal of ours against anybody.”

UW was sagging defensively at the end of the first half when Maryland’s 14-4 run cut the Badgers’ halftime lead to two. The Terrapins – which had trailed for a combined 8:07 in their previous eight games – took their first lead at 18:43 but never extended it beyond one point with the inability to string together more than three made shots in a row.

Once a competitive half with eight lead changes and three times, Wisconsin pulled away when it held the visitors to only three makes on its final 18 shots.

“We talked a lot about it the last couple days about their physicality on defense, especially at home,” Maryland coach Kevin Willard said. “I think everybody gets away with murder at home … They’re excellent defensively. They play physical. They’re on a string together.”

The undercard of the matchup when watching Maryland forward Donta Scott and Wisconsin forward Tyler Wahl beat the heck out of one another. Scott (Maryland’s leading scorer at 15.4 ppg) finished 3-for-14 from the floor and Wahl (UW’s leading scorer at 14.5) finished with 9 on 3-for-10 shooting before fouling out. Each player drew 11 fouls, many against each other.

Due to some lackadaisical shooting performances early in the season, Wisconsin was averaging a modest 12.0 assists through its first eight games, a number that put the Badgers at 270th nationally. Things were much crisper against the Terps with 14 assists, nine coming in the first half as UW registered multiple textbook passing sequences.

At the 13:26 mark, Wahl bounced a pass to guard Max Klesmit cutting into the lane. The lane penetration drew Steven Crowl’s defender and Klesmit hit Crowl with a bounce pass for a wide-open layup that forced Maryland to take a timeout.

Just before the half, Chucky Hepburn hit Wahl off an inbounds pass with Wahl cutting to the low block from the high block, giving UW a 31-29 lead.

On Carter Gilmore's three-pointer at 10:22 remaining, which put Wisconsin ahead to stay, freshman Connor Essegian drove into the paint and saw four defenders collapse around him. The freshman was rewarded later when both of his three-point makes were the results of ball movement and kick-outs to him in open spaces.

The sharing of the ball helped seven players score between 13 and seven points, a number that could have been higher considering the number of passes that led to free throws, like when Gilmore delivered a bounce pass to a cutting Wahl in the paint that drew a foul.

“That’s what I love about this team, nobody cares who’s scoring the ball as long as it’s going in,” said Hepburn, who had a team-high 13 points. “We had a possession in the first half where me, Max, and Connor had open threes and just kicked it one more. That just shows the type of team we are.”

Usually an unsung hero for Wisconsin (or a maligned player to those uneducated on social media), Gilmore’s play went beyond his career-high seven points. In addition to the two players mentioned above, Gilmore read a gap in Maryland’s zone that allowed him to convert a layup at the rim, a big play at the time that helped slow an 11-0 Maryland run in the first half.

“Ever since the season started, my teammates telling me to play more like myself out there,” Gilmore said. “I’ve played good in practice. It’s all those reps paying off, just doing it out in a game, being more instinctive, and not thinking as much.”

After averaging 7.8 minutes and 0.9 points in 22 games off the bench last season, Gilmore is averaging 2.4 points in 16.7 minutes, doing more than his stats suggest by boxing out unmarked players and tapping out loose balls to create opportunities for Wisconsin’s defense.

“I don't find him making many mistakes on the defensive end,” Gard said. The positioning is really good. His awareness of things -- he's got a good basketball IQ. He helps cover up for teammates' mistakes … He's just solid. He understands who he is and understands who he is not. For the most part (he) stays trending towards what he's capable of doing and doesn't try to get out of character.”

Averaging 16 free throw attempts per game, a low number by Wisconsin standards, the Badgers were able to get to the line a season-high 27 times with seven players shooting attempts. Only problem was Wisconsin made just 17 of them, registering a season-high in misses that all came in the second half (15-for-25).

Of the five trips to the line the Badgers made in the final 2:32, they missed at least one free throw three times that allowed Maryland to have a pulse. Wahl was just 3-for-7 from the line.

“I watch these guys shoot free throws every day,” Gard said. “Tyler (Wahl) has shot them really well. He’s been in the 80 percent range. Just get there, knock them down. It does become a little infectious when you miss one and then a teammate goes up (and misses), but I like the fact that we’re getting there. We just need to calm down, relax, and knock them down.”

A game that was breezing right along with just nine first-half fouls called was grounded to a halt via whistles in the final 20 minutes.

Maryland and Wisconsin combined for 29 fouls after halftime, leading to 36 free throws and a lot of stops and starts. At one point, four straight possessions were stopped because of fouls called by the three-man crew of D.J. Carstensen, Larry Scirotto, and Chris Beaver.

“I felt like after every position, the game stopped,” Hepburn said. “It’s kind of what we wanted, slow the game down and get them out of rhythm, but it’s definitely not something we want to do is foul … That’s something we got to fix. We’ve got to stop fouling a lot. We got caught gambling a lot of times and putting ourselves in bad situations. We got to fix that and it’s a simple fix, too.

As Hepburn added: “When you play solid defense, it makes up for missing free throws.”

Scirotto worked Wisconsin’s home opener, a three-man crew that called 35 fouls, while Carstensen worked UW’s game against Wake Forest which had 38 fouls.

32:51 - On its 8-0 start, Maryland had trailed a total of 8 minutes, 7 seconds of a possibly 320 game minutes (leading 99.97 percent of the time). The Badgers more than quadrupled that Tuesday.

3.0 – Wisconsin’s last six games have all been decided by six points or less, averaging out to 3.0 points per contest. Wisconsin is 4-2 in those games.

14 - Wisconsin had 14 assists on 20 made field goals

8 - The Badgers had just eight turnovers, lowering their season averaging to 10.2 per game.

13-10 - Wisconsin has a .565 winning percentage (13-10) at home under AP Top 25 times under Gard

400 - Tuesday was the 400th game since the Kohl Center opened in January 1998. The Badgers are 338-62 (.845)

29 - Maryland's 29 points in the first half were the Terrapins' lowest scoring output in a half this season.

16-5 - Wisconsin's record in games decided by five points or fewer the last two seasons

7-1 - Wisconsin's home record against teams who were 8-0 or better since 2000. On that list is Marquette in 2001 (10-0), Pittsburgh in 2006 (10-0), Purdue in 2010 (14-0), Ohio State in 2011 (21-0), Michigan in 2019 (17-0), and Indiana in 2019 (8-0).

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