Wisconsin beats Indiana, grabs share of Big Ten title.
Resilient Badgers win share of title
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Minutes after guiding his basketball team to at least a share of the program’s first Big Ten regular-season title since 2015, Wisconsin coach Greg Gard gathered his players in the visiting locker room at storied Assembly Hall.
His eyes filled with tears, Gard stood on the edge of a circle of champions and reminded everyone in the room of the obstacles this team has overcome, beginning with the tragic auto accident on Memorial Day weekend that left assistant coach Howard Moore unable to coach and claimed the lives of his wife and daughter.
“That was more adversity,” Gard said, pausing. “I felt if we could get through that, there was nothing (worse) we were going to see in the season. That was real-life adversity. “And it’s ironic. …”
Gard paused again, turned and walked toward a whiteboard on the wall and used numbers to tie together how far this team has come since May.
Gard wrote the final score of UW’s victory over Indiana on Saturday – 6056 – in the form of an equation. The difference was four.
Gard wrote: “4 MOORE.”
That elicited applause from the
room and Gard returned to the circle.
“I’m so proud of you guys,” Gard said. “So proud. Man, you guys are awesome.”
Awesome. Resilient. Unified. Indefatigable.
All of the above words describe how this UW team, just 6-6 in the Big Ten and 13-10 overall on Feb. 5 after an 18point loss at Minnesota, sprinted home by winning its final eight games.
The Badgers (21-10, 14-6 Big Ten) trailed by as many as nine points in the second half but outscored Indiana, 16-5, over the final 6 minutes 34 seconds to extend their winning streak to eight league games, matching their best run since Gard took over 12 games into the 2015-16 season.
“I’ve never had a team have to endure more and fight through more,” Gard said. “And I’m not talking about the last seven minutes. I’m talking about what they’ve seen the last nine months.
“That last seven minutes was a microcosm of what we’ve gone through, to fight uphill and find a way to battle back down (nine). This has been unbelievable. The guts. The heart. The toughness of this group.”
UW moved one-half game ahead of Maryland (23-7, 13-6) and Michigan State (21-9, 13-6), with those teams set to close the regular season on Sunday.
Maryland hosts Michigan (19-11, 10-9) at 11 a.m. and Michigan State hosts Ohio State (21-9, 11-8) at 3:30 p.m.
UW will be seeded no lower than No. 2 for the Big Ten tournament.
The Badgers will receive the No. 1 seeding if they finish in a three-way tie with Michigan State and Maryland (best round-robin record among the tied teams), if they share the title with Maryland (head-to-head tie-breaker) or if they share the title with Michigan State and Maryland finishes alone in third (winning percentage against No. 3 team). They will receive the No. 2 seeding if they share the title with Michigan State and Maryland and Illinois tie for third (winning percentage against No. 3 teams).
As has been the case for most of this season and particularly during the eight-game winning streak, UW got huge plays up and down the lineup.
Nate Reuvers grabbed a huge offensive rebound off a miss by D’Mitrik Trice and scored to give UW a 58-54 lead with 21 seconds left. Reuvers finished with 17 points to lead all scorers and added seven rebounds.
Micah Potter, making his third start of the season, overcame second-half trouble to finished with 16 points and 11 rebounds. Potter had two critical offensive rebounds late, which resulted in six points for UW.
“We were all thinking the same thing,” Potter said. “We’re not losing this game. I was going to do whatever I could to put us in position to win the game.”
Potter grabbed the loose ball after a missed three-pointer by Brevin Pritzl, scored and was fouled. He converted a three-point play to forge a 51-51 tie with 5:08 left.
Then on UW’s next possession, Brad Davison missed a long threepointer but Potter again got the rebound. He fired the ball back out to Davison, who hit this three-point attempt for a 54-51 lead with 4:02 left.
“Micah got it and turned around and found me right away,” said Davison, who hit 3 of 5 three-pointers, made two free throws to close the scoring with 7.1 seconds left and finished with 11 points and three steals. “That is why you come to Wisconsin, to compete for Big Ten championships and moments like this.
“You’ve got to take the shot. … I knew that would be a big momentum swing so I let it fly.”
D’Mitrik Trice missed his first six shots and finished just 2 of 10 but both baskets came late, with the second giving UW a 56-51 lead with 1:17 left.
He finished with four points and five assists and became the first UW player to record 1,000 points, 300 rebounds and 300 assists before the close of his junior season.
“We don’t have a star,” Gard said. “We have a team full of stars. We’ve done it by committee and we did it by committee today.”
After celebrating in the UW locker room, Gard brought assistants Joe Krabbenhoft, Dean Oliver and Alando Tucker, who has taken the place of Moore, to meet reporters. Then came the five starters.
All parties agreed the celebration included tears, hugs, screams of joy and thoughts of Moore.
“It was a perfect ending to a story but you’ve got to realize the story is not over yet,” Davison said. “Overcoming adversity has been the theme of the year, the hills and valleys of life and also the hills and valleys of the season. And we went through hills and valleys in the game today, too.
“But we were resilient. We stuck together. That is what got us through tragedy and what is going to carry us through triumph.”