With twelve minutes to play in the second-half, the Wisconsin Badgers held a 12-point lead over USC. The “White-Out” crowd was charged up at the Kohl Center after a Braeden Carrington three-pointer extended the lead to double-digits to force a USC timeout. It appeared at that moment that the Badgers were on their way to win their sixth straight Big Ten game.
Afterward, Wisconsin’s offense was significantly less effective, and the USC Trojans mounted a second-half comeback to win 73-71 in Madison.
Sunday’s loss was shades of last year’s home game against Oregon, where the Badgers held a double-digit lead but allowed the opposition to chip away while Wisconsin went cold on offense. Like in the Oregon game, the Badgers did not get much from most of their starters and shot poorly from the three-point line.
Here are three standouts from the USC-Wisconsin game on Sunday.
Badgers’ Three-Point Shooting
You are not going to win many games shooting 9-for-37 from behind the three-point line.
Badger starters John Blackwell (1-for-7), Andrew Rohde (2-for-7), Nick Boyd (1-for-5), and Nolan Winter (2-for-6) did not have a great three-point shooting day.
I understand that this Badgers’ offense has the “live by the three, die by the three” attitude, but I wish they wouldn’t settle for it.
Chad Baker-Mazara
For the second time in conference play, Baker-Mazara dropped 29 points. Against the Badgers, Baker-Mazara shot 10-of-22 from the floor, including 5-of-11 from behind the three-point line.
He was USC’s main three-point offense, as the Trojans’ only other three-pointer came from Jacob Cofie. For Wisconsin to win on Sunday, it had to shut down Baker-Mazara. They did not do that.
Nick Boyd
If anyone on Wisconsin’s team stood out on Sunday, it was Boyd. The veteran point guard had 29 points on 10-of-17 shots from the floor and did all he could to will his team against USC.
I was not thrilled with how the last possession to tie the game played out, but I am not going to blame Greg Gard for putting the ball in Boyd’s hands late, given how he performed in the game.
