Halftime reverie resets Badgers
Gard urges team to play solid
Greg Gard walked into the Wisconsin locker room at halftime and offered one tip to his players:
“We need to look in the mirror. Just be solid. Trust your fundamentals and trust what we do every day and those things will pay off for us.
“If we stick to our plan and defend according to our principles we’ll eventually be able to get things under control.
“We were able to do that.”
The final tally on the BMO Harris Bradley Center scoreboard — UW 93, Marquette 84 — confirmed that turnaround Saturday afternoon.
UW (9-2) entered the game limiting foes to 59.1 points per game on 40.1% shooting and had held eight of its 10 foes to season-low point totals.
Marquette (7-3) hit 5 three-pointers in the first half — UW’s goal was to limit the Golden Eagles to five in the game — and shot 48.3% in building a 40-35 halftime lead.
Gard counted mistakes on 4 of the 5 threepointers, which resulted in shooters getting open shots.
“We didn’t do a very good job,” UW senior guard Bronson Koenig said. “But we picked it up in the second half.”
Trailing, 47-46, UW reeled off 16 consecutive points over the span of 4 minutes 49 seconds to build a 62-47 advantage with 9:24 left.
Marquette missed all six field-goal attempts and had three turnovers during the run. Five of the shots were jumpers, including 2 three-pointers.
After scoring 40 points in the first 20 minutes, the Golden Eagles managed just seven in the first 11:02 of the second half.
“Defensively there we were pretty good,” Gard said. “They were having a hard time getting looks and our offense helped our defense.
“We were efficient offensively and we were able to score at the rim. And that helped us to set our defense.”
One UW player who took a long look in the proverbial mirror at halftime was redshirt sophomore forward Ethan Happ.
Happ, who was averaging a double-double entering the day (13.5 points, 10.0 rebounds), picked up two fouls in the first 1:41 of the game and spent the rest of the half on the bench.
Happ, who sometimes allows early struggles to adversely affect his performance, dominated Marquette after halftime.
He scored four of UW’s first eight points in the half and in 15 secondhalf minutes contributed 11 points, five rebounds, one assist and one block.
“The biggest thing for me was bringing a spark to the team but not trying to do too much. Not trying to make up for lost time, but just take what was within the offense.”
UW’s overall efficiency was impressive. The Badgers had a 42-30 edge in points in the paint, a 2211 edge in points off turnovers and had 20 assists and nine turnovers. But the turnaround started in the locker room at halftime.
“Let’s back to being just solid,” Gard said, expanding on his halftime comments. “Solid will lead to success. We don’t have to do anything superhuman here. Let’s get back to defending how we can defend, take good shots and see where that lands us.”
In the winner’s circle.