There are no moral victories with the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team, not for a program that has laid claim to two of the past three regular-season crowns. But even head coach Greg Gard couldn’t help but hint at Thursday’s 69-68 overtime loss to No.3 Kansas being razor close to one.

“They know how good of a team we can be,” Gard said. “We’re not quite where we need to be, but we’re getting closer. This will help us, as much as it stings right now.”

Falling to the reigning national champions in the semifinals of the Battle 4 Atlantis in The Bahamas is one thing, but the fact that the Badgers (4-1) shook off an ugly offensive first half to erase a 15-point lead is another. The only difference was Kansas (6-0) made the big play at the end of regulation and hit an overtime buzzer beater to seal a victory.

Here are my Thanksgiving takeaways from the Battle 4 Atlantis semifinals.

The first half Thursday looked a lot like what the Badgers did the day before offensively, which wasn’t a good thing.

Rushed, off-balanced shots and bad ball movement all contributed to Wisconsin shooting 30.8 percent from the floor and generating only two offensive rebounds. When Kansas made a push, the Badgers struggled to piece together possessions, showing no consistent weapon offensively (or anything consistent for that matter) with missed shots at the rim, not connecting from the mid-range or the perimeter, and not getting to the free throw line.

That started to change in the second half with Wisconsin relying on its defense. The Badgers forced five turnovers from the 14:49 mark to the 11:52 mark, allowing Wisconsin to cut a 12-point lead down to five with Kansas point guard Dajuan Harris on the bench with foul trouble. UW’s ball movement and shot selection was better, as well as getting the ball into the low post. Max Klesmit got a layup, Tyler Wahl drew fouls and hit free throws, and Carter Gilmore made plays around the rim.

Even when Kansas ripped off a 10-0 run to lead by eight with 3:40 left, Wisconsin went on an 11-0 run to lead by three with 23 seconds remaining.

“In the first half we were forcing some shots,” Wahl said. “In the second half, we did a better job of letting the game come to us, not getting speed up and just getting the shots we know that are good.”

Kansas coach Bill Self admitted that Wisconsin “totally outplayed” his team in the second half and his team had “nothing going” after halftime, only being able to survive in part because the Badgers failed to get a defensive rebound both at the end of regulation and overtime that led to buckets.

“We made two plays that basically gave us the win,” Self said. “We were not the best team today.”

Wisconsin’s undefeated start was easily misleading. The Badgers ground out 56 points against winless Green Bay and carved out just 43 points in Wednesday’s win over Dayton – a game in which UW’s 23.7 shooting percentage was the lowest by a Division-1 team in a win since Temple in 2014.

Gard has stated multiple times that there are a lot of unknowns with this team after the graduation of Johnny Davis and Brad Davison. So, while getting narrowly beat by a fortunate bounce leaves a bad taste in the mouth, it shows the roster how good they can be when the offense and defense are functioning like they were for long stretches in the second half.

“This group showed me a lot today,” Gard said. “We also learned that we have a lot of things that we can continue to get better at. These are the type of experiences you want early in the year. Obviously, you want results, but the resolve, the grit, and the willingness to keep battling and come back and play a better second half. We just need to continue to put larger chunks of time together playing at a high level.”

As Wisconsin’s head coach has stated before, this is the reason they schedule these types of games.

Wisconsin built its roster this season around established starters Steven Crowl and Wahl in the frontcourt and point guard Chucky Hepburn, hoping the players it brought in from the transfer portal and last year’s reserves would take a step forward. It’s a small sample size, but the Badgers’ big three haven’t been able to carry the weight offensively consistently. Wahl helped remove his name from that list in the final 25 minutes Thursday.

Wahl was forced to sit for close to six minutes after picking up his fourth foul with 9:17 remaining, a time when a three-point game swelled to eight. When he returned with 3:38 to go, he was a different animal. He shot the ball on five consecutive possessions for Wisconsin, converting on four of them with layups at the rim.

“I decided that I needed to bring some energy, switch up the pace,” Wahl said. “Just be ultra-aggressive, get downhill, get to my spots.”

Of the 11 points on that closing run, Wahl was responsible for nine of them, hurting Kansas by catching the ball off the block and backing a defender down to the low post.

“He kicked our butt,” Self said.

In overtime, after Wisconsin went empty on its first four possessions (one of which was him turning the ball over), Wahl twice made plays at the rim to put the Badgers ahead by one point. He’ll bemoan himself for not grabbing the game’s last rebound, a contested loose ball that caromed right to Bobby Pettiford for the game-winning layup at the buzzer, but Wahl shook off a 1-for-8 quarterfinals to get back on track.

“He’s one of the best players in our league, in the country,” Gard said. “The foul trouble got him a chance to calm down, sit on the bench, gather his thoughts. He came back and made big plays for us down the stretch.”

For Wisconsin to be great, Wahl must play well.

For Wisconsin to beat great teams, the Badgers need both Wahl and Hepburn to be solid. Part of the reason they aren’t playing for a championship Friday is Hepburn’s struggles appear to be plaguing his confidence on both ends of the floor. Finishing 2-for-9 from the floor, Hepburn is 5-for-33 over his last three games with no more than two baskets in any game. It was evident that Hepburn was forcing shots, too, including an off look at the end of regulation that would have won the game but missed everything. His shot on the first possession of overtime was equally porous and he didn’t attempt another shot in the five-minute frame.

After committing three turnovers in a game only four times his true freshman season, he’s had three miscues in consecutive games for the first time at Wisconsin. Hepburn made a bad pass when leading a 2-on-1 break with Wahl with 10:36 remaining, causing a turnover and preventing the Badgers from cutting the deficit to two.

Hepburn was not made available to reporters after the game.

The play of Wahl down the stretch slightly overshadowed the work of freshman Connor Essegian. It shouldn’t because Wisconsin is nowhere close to striking distance if Essegian doesn’t deliver the performance he did. He had 13 points in the second half, including going 3-for-4 from the perimeter, and added two rebounds, an assist, a steal, and no turnovers. In his 16 minutes on the floor, Wisconsin outscored Kansas by 17 points. He scored nine of his points in a six-and-a-half-minute stretch that cut the lead to one with just under nine minutes to go.

“I was out there just playing,” Essegian said. “For those to go in, that was exciting, but at the same time, we really just wanted to claw back. At that time, we needed something to get going.”

Essegian is growing exponentially game by game, even surprising the coaching staff with the athleticism and toughness that he plays with. It might not happen soon, but considering the Badgers aren’t getting much offense from Jordan Davis (0 points, 0-for-5 shooting), Essegian might work his way into the starting lineup by the New Year.

For the second consecutive day, Wisconsin’s defense made things difficult on an NCAA Tournament-caliber opponent. Kansas scored 80 points against N.C. State, but the Badgers packed the paint and forced the Jayhawks to shoot from the mid-range and the perimeter, the latter being UW’s strength.

Entering the second media timeout of the first half, Kansas was just 2-for-16 from the floor (missing 10 straight at one point). But for a 5-minute, 25-second stretch, the Badgers lost their edge and Kansas took advantage.

Jayhawks hit 7 of 9 shots to turn a 6-6 game into a lead as big as 11. The three-pointers were a big weapon with Kansas hitting four on the stretch. Badgers got snagged on the back cuts when the rotation was a step slow and Klesmit gave Kansas freshman forward Gradey Dick too much space on consecutive three-pointers. Hitting 3.2 perimeter shots per game, Dick hit three in the first half … although UW limited him to no points on one shot in the second half.

Wisconsin was able to hold Kansas to 38.7 percent from the floor, only seven fast-break points, and score 13 points off 13 turnovers … but those early lapses were costly in a one-point overtime loss.

“There are so many things that if we could have done a handful better here or there,” Gard said, “we would have had a different outcome.”

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