Takeaways from Wisconsin's 89-76 Win Over Marquette

MADISON, Wis. – Scouting reports are going to be a nightmare for the Big Ten opponents coming up on Wisconsin’s schedule in the months ahead.

It must be tough, considering Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard is hard pressed to do an analysis on his own team with where the production is going to come from.

“That’s the beauty of this team and the excitement about it,” Gard said. “There’s so much unknown.”

The mystery surrounding Wisconsin basketball is starting to come into focus: these Badgers play hard, and they are going to be tough defensively. On Saturday, they sprinkled in a few offensive fireworks for added flair.

Wisconsin’s defense-first approach turned into an offensive steamroller in the second half, busting the game open to deliver an 89-76 victory over Marquette at the sold-out Kohl Center.

Here are my five takeaways from the rivalry win.

Four minutes had elapsed in the second half and Wisconsin held a 41-40 lead. Thirteen minutes later, the Badgers led by 23 points. The offensive firepower that suddenly exploded out of the Badgers stunned Marquette, which managed little going against a UW defense that mostly stayed on point.

The numbers are staggering for a UW offense that was averaging 68.0 points per game and needed a late scoring surge to shoot 35.3 percent by halftime. After missing its first two shots, Wisconsin made its next eight shots to go up by nine. The Badgers kept pouring it on and shot 70.4 percent in the second half (19-for-27) to finish at a season-high 50.8 percent from the field.

Coupled with the Badgers being assertive defensively, holding Marquette to eight straight misses at one point, UW had runs of 18-4 and 25-10 in the second half to turn a nail biter turned into a rout.

Three players – Brad Davison (14), Jordan Davis (11), and Chucky Hepburn (10) – all reached double figures in the second half alone, making a profound impact with their play. Davison and Davis were both 4-for-5 from the field.

Making the unnatural look natural with the way he contorted his body to get good shooting angles, Davis scored or assisted on 10 straight points to build that initial nine-point lead. He upped his scoring average to 20.1 points over his six games played and is slowly starting to creep into the conversation as one of the best scorers in the country (he’s already there, according to Davison).

“Johnny is a great player,” Hepburn said. “Sometimes you give Johnny the ball and get the ‘F’ out of the way.”

Davison delivered multiple big shots (second-chance 3-pointer and old-fashioned 3-point play with 4:32 remaining). Behind Davis’s game-high 25 points, Davison’s 20 points, and Hepburn’s career-high 15, Wisconsin’s starters outscored Marquette’s five, 80 to 36, as they imposed their will on the visitors.

“Their perimeter players were phenomenal,” Marquette coach Shaka Smart said. “They gave them a huge edge.”

Wisconsin’s 55 points in the second half are the most in any half since scoring 69 against Savannah State in December 2018 and the most in a second half since besting Arizona in the 2015 NCAA West regional.

Smart loves to turn up the pressure, famous for his 1-2-1-1 “havoc” full-court press. Getting pressure is nothing new for Wisconsin considering it’s been thrown that in periods throughout the season. What was impressive was that the Badgers, mostly, didn’t get rattled.

UW got a lot of good looks in the low blocks when they broke the action in the first half. Part of the help was Marquette 6-10 senior Kur Kuath (he who possesses 25 of MU’s 41 blocks this year) picking up two fouls in the first 4:14. The problem was UW couldn’t finish in the lane.

When Wisconsin burned a timeout at the 8:45 mark to regroup, the Badgers were 0-for-5 on layups and 5-for-19 overall. Heading into the timeout, UW was 0-for-7 and one for its last 11. UW ended up finishing 8-for-15 on layups and 2-for-2 on dunks, a sign that Wisconsin’s frontcourt was able to keep breaking pressure to keep getting the ball to high-percentage areas.

Lorne Bowman struggled more than Hepburn did, finishing with three turnovers, including a charge in the backcourt, and was tentative at times instead of attacking. Still, as UW head coach Greg Gard said after the game, both guards are “wise beyond their years” with their ability to understand the concepts and get the offense into their sets.

It may say true freshman next to his name on the roster, but Hepburn is no longer playing like a rookie point guard just seven games into his college career.

The offense mentioned earlier (career-high 15 points) is one thing, but Hepburn delivered a career-high six assists against Marquette’s defense and registered two steals of his own. One of his finest moments came late in the first half when his aggressive on-ball defense forced a shot-clock violation that pumped up the crowd as much as any shot that went into the net Saturday.

“I thought he played like a vet,” Davis said of Hepburn. “He was really calm and composed. Defensively he was all over them. That’s what we need.”

Hepburn admits that his shot still isn’t where he wants it. Entering the game shooting 36.4 percent, Hepburn went 5-for-8 from the floor and 2-for-4 from 3-point range.

“This year I have been struggling offensively to find my confidence,” Hepburn said. “Today was a big game for me. I feel like I got my confidence back.”

If Hepburn can add between 8-12 points a game to go with his passing and defense, the Badgers are going to be very tough in conference play.

Lost in the headlines was the play of Crowl, who reached double figures in scoring for the fourth time in eight games with 15 points and matched his career-high with eight rebounds. Crowl put up solid stat lines in each half – scoring 8 points, grabbing 6 rebounds, having 1 assist with no turnovers or fouls called in the first half, and going 3-for-3 with two rebounds and a block in the second half.

Davis said postgame that he challenged Crowl to stop being “soft” and the sophomore forward responded by attacking the rim and letting open perimeter shots fly.

“Every day in practice, he’s not finishing like he should be, we’re all getting on him,” Davis said. “He likes to work hard, great kid, but we’re looking forward to him coming up these next couple games.”

Crowl’s ability to score around the rim, the perimeter, and pass is a huge weapon for Wisconsin to stretch its offense, as fans have seen in the past that Badgers big men with those skills create matchup problems for other centers. With bigger, physical Big Ten teams coming up next, Crowl is currently playing the best basketball of his young career.

In talking of the Wisconsin program afterward, Smart said that Gard and his staff have formed a unit in which all the pieces seem to work together. While it’s impressive that Wisconsin’s starting five scored 80 points, the other side of the coin was the six reserves who played more than two minutes scored only seven. Five of those points were scored by Bowman, as UW's reserves finished 3-for-9 shooting.

Still working his way back from a leg injury, Jahcobi Neath missed all three of the shots he took and finished with one point. Carter Gilmore played seven minutes and had three fouls with no shot attempts. Jordan Davis played three minutes and Marquette outscored Wisconsin by eight. Ben Carlson was a team-worst -11 on the floor.

It’s early, something Gard has harped on consistently through the first month of the season, but it’s assumed that some team will eventually figure out how to slow Davis. When that time comes, UW must have a bench weapon – currently an unproven offensive one - to help fill that gap.

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