Wisconsin picked up its most impressive victory of the season in Columbus, upsetting Ohio State in a 61-57 affair. Here are our top three takeaways from the game for the Badgers.
It wasn’t pretty, but Wisconsin finally found a way to win on the road despite ugly offense.
Upon first glance at the box score from last night (at least Wisconsin’s half), most would be understandably perplexed as to how on earth the Badgers won this game.
It looked as though the Badgers were going to get routed early on. On their first ten possessions, they went 0-5 from the floor and turned the ball over five times. Bucky didn’t even get on the board until the 13:53 mark and committed seven total turnovers in the first half.
Overall, Wisconsin shot the ball as poorly as we have seen from them in their previous woeful road performances this season, converting just 37.5 percent of its looks from the field, including 26.1 percent (6-23) from long-range. Many of those misses were on clean looks.
However, the difference between this performance and their previous poor outings on the road? Wisconsin locked down Ohio State defensively.
Aside from Kaleb Wesson, who was the best player on the floor last night on either side with his 22 points (7-10 shooting, 7-9 free throws) and 13 boards, the Buckeyes fared about as poorly as the Badgers on offense. Take Wesson out of the equation, and Ohio State was just 12-37 (23.4 percent) from the field.
The Buckeyes are certainly not playing their best basketball right now, but there’s no question that they are still one of the Big Ten’s best teams, and the Badgers went into a hostile arena and took them down despite horrible shooting numbers. While you could certainly consider this a bit of a steal of a win for Bucky, it won’t do any less to provide this team with a boost of confidence that it can play with anybody, in any environment.