Badgers hit the maul
Slow start leaves Bengals in the dust
Madison — The college basketball game held Wednesday night at the Kohl Center quickly morphed into a glorified scrimmage for No. 17 Wisconsin.
Idaho State entered the night with one victory on its eightgame résumé, went scoreless for the first 6 minutes, 3 seconds of the game and offered little resistance throughout as UW recorded a 78-44 victory.
Idaho State coach Bill Evans captured the mood of his team with one comment after entering the media room.
Evans looked for a bottled sports drink near his microphone and asked:
“Is this tequila? Because if it’s not tequila I’m not really interested. I don’t drink anyway but I’m about to try.”
Downing a shot or two before the game wouldn’t have hurt because the Bengals (1-8) rarely hit anything during the game.
UW (8-2) played suffocating defense against guard Ethan Telfair, the brother of Oklahoma City guard Sebastian Telfair, to improve to 14-2 at home under Greg Gard, with the losses coming last season to Purdue and Maryland.
Ethan Telfair entered the night leading Idaho State in scoring at 19.8 points per game. Guarded mostly by Zak Showalter, Telfair missed his first six shots. He finished 1 of 9 for two points.
“I didn’t want to let him get comfortable, make him (take) some tough twos,” said Showalter, who finished with four points, five rebounds, four steals, three assists and a block in 25 minutes. “I think we did a good job as a unit tonight. We switched a lot of the dribble handoffs so other guys were matched up on him. That kind of helped. I think we all kept
him taking tough shots.”
Consider some of the numbers from the opening 20 minutes as UW built a 35-16 lead:
Idaho State missed its first seven field-goal attempts and finished the half with 12 turnovers, 15 missed shots, 16 points and 10 rebounds. The Bengals finally hit the 10point mark with 5:29 left in the first half. They finished 16 of 48 (33.3%) overall and were held below the 50-point mark for the first time this season.
“I thought we were pretty sharp for quite a bit of that game,” Gard said. “There were a few breakdowns here and there that we’ll look at on film. But I thought for the most part defensively we were in position, we were attentive to detail and really did a pretty good job of making life difficult for them, specifically Telfair.”
UW’s Nigel Hayes and Ethan Happ combined for 21 points and 11 rebounds in the first half as UW shot 48.3% (14 of 29).
Happ recorded a doubledouble (12 points, 12 rebounds) for the third time in four games and fourth in the last six.
Hayes finished with 11 points, four rebounds, one block, one steal and one assist. He played just 21 minutes and no UW starter played more than 25 minutes.
Bronson Koenig scored 16 of his game-high 21 points in the second half for UW. He hit 4 of 7 three-pointers and 7 of 10 shots overall, in just 17 minutes.
The Badgers next face Marquette (7-2) at 1 p.m. Saturday at the BMO Harris Bradley Center. Marquette, which has won five consecutive games this season, has won three of the last five meetings with UW.
Needless to say, the level of intensity will be greater than it was Wednesday night as the crowd appeared in a comatose state during the first half as UW built a 21-3 lead with 9:04 left until the break.
“It kind of took a while to get going,” Showalter said. “A little dead. But we came together at halftime, played off each other a little better in the second half and took care of business.”