Happ half helps
Late run rips open tight in-state battle
Wisconsin is a much better team when redshirt sophomore forward Ethan Happ is on the court. Marquette learned that the hard way in a 93-84 loss to the 17th-ranked Badgers on Saturday afternoon in front of a sellout crowd of 18,691 at the BMO Harris Bradley Center.
The Golden Eagles (7-3), buoyed by four three-pointers by Katin Reinhardt off the bench, did more than just hang with the Badgers (9-2) in the first half. Marquette took the fight to UW, matching the Badgers on the boards and forcing them into contested threepointers, of which the Badgers made just 3 of 10. That resulted in a 40-35 lead for the home team entering halftime.
But that was all without Happ on the floor.
Happ collected a pair of fouls in the first 101 seconds of the game and didn’t see the court for the rest of the first half. Without one of their top three players, one who Marquette coach Steve Wojciechowski said has a chance to be player of the year in the Big Ten, the Badgers struggled to find a rhythm at either end of the court.
That changed dramatically following a halftime ceremony honoring Marquette’s 1977 national championship team.
Happ returned to the court and with him Wisconsin got back to normal. Happ immediately contributed, scoring six of his 11 points and grabbing all five of his rebounds in the first 61⁄2 minutes of the half.
“You saw how well he played,” UW senior forward Nigel Hayes said of Happ. “He ate (Luke) Fischer alive. That’s what we’ve been telling him to do. We know he’s great down there in the low post and he does a great job for us down there.
You definitely saw when he came back in he was ready to go.”
With Happ back, the Badgers began to look more like themselves. UW’s defense shut down Marquette’s drive-andkick options, forced turnovers and locked down the paint. After taking a 47-46 lead with 14:37 remaining, Marquette went cold. The Golden Eagles missed six straight shots and committed three turnovers during a drought that lasted nearly six minutes.
At the other end of the court, the Badgers rattled off 16 straight points. Five players contributed to that run, with Happ leading the charge with five points, capping the spurt with a layup through a foul by Fischer.
“For whatever reason, and I have to figure it out, our starts to second halves have been really poor,” Wojciechowski said. “We allow a team to get so much momentum and when you’re playing a team that’s got a chance to make a Final Four run and you give them momentum, that’s a recipe for disaster. Our defense has got to get a lot better. There’s no question about that.”
There were still more than 9 minutes left on the clock following that three-point play by Happ, but the result of the game was never in question. The Golden Eagles got as close as eight multiple times in the final few minutes but couldn’t get closer in part because of sieve-like defense. UW scored 58 points in the second half, leading to a total of 93 — the most for the Badgers in the 123game series.
As much as Happ gave the Badgers a boost, it was seniors Bronson Koenig and Hayes who powered the scoring attack, pouring in 18 and 17 points, respectively, with sophomore Khalil Iverson adding a career-high 16, including 12 in the second half. Collectively, UW scored 22 points off 12 Marquette turnovers. The Badgers flipped the script from last year’s game, when the Golden Eagles dominated the paint, by holding a 42-30 advantage inside Saturday.
“Marquette just played harder than us last year, in Madison, too,” Koenig said. “We just wanted to come here and do the same thing — play harder, get to loose balls first, everything like that.”
Point guard Markus Howard led Marquette with 22 points, impressive considering that, according to Wojciechowski, the 17-year-old freshman received five or six bags of IV fluid over the past few days to combat a stomach virus. Reinhardt and sophomore guard Haanif Cheatham added 16 each and redshirt junior Andrew Rowsey scored 15 off the bench.
Fischer scored nine points in the first half then collected just two in the second. Freshman guard Sam Hauser, who had been one of the most efficient players in the nation in his first nine games, fouled out in 18 minutes with no points. Marquette
had just eight assists on 27 made field goals.
“We just really needed to get the ball moving,” Howard said. “We’re usually a team that averages over 20 assists a game. We can’t get distracted with personal agendas. We have to play as a whole, play as one. We still have a lot of sorting out to do as a team, but we’re going to get there. I’m very confident that we will.”
Saturday’s victory was Wisconsin’s third in four years and gave the Badgers nine wins in 16 chances at the Bradley Center, which will likely be rubble when the two teams square off again in two years at Milwaukee’s new downtown arena.
“The rivalry doesn’t mean much to me, I’m from Ohio, so I don’t really care,” Hayes said. “I just look at it as another game that we’ve got the ability to go out and win against a good team and try and get ourselves better as a team for our own year. But I guess since I am here, we had a little bump last year in the road, but water always finds its level, big brother always rises back to the top where he’s supposed to be.”