Tar Heels 60, Badgers 57: Wisconsin Can Hang

You can’t shoot 8-for-28 on three-pointers in Chapel Hill and expect to win. You can’t shoot 35.9% from the field in Chapel Hill and expect to win. Your star player can’t shoot 30% in Chapel Hill and expect to win. That’s what the Wisconsin Badgers did in Chapel Hill on Wednesday night. And they didn’t win.

Instead, the Badgers fell to the North Carolina Tar Heels by a 60-57 score. The Badgers couldn’t get the road win that could have defined a non-conference stretch, and they couldn’t get the win against quality competition to convince the skeptics over their top-10 ranking. But the Badgers did prove they have what it takes to hang with the best of the best in college basketball, no matter the venue and no matter the talent opposite them.

For the Tar Heels, it was simply too much Harrison Barnes. The North Carolina star and future NBA lottery pick scored 20 points on just 12 field goal attempts and was one of the few players from either side with any accuracy from a jump shot. North Carolina had a few other solid performances — 12 points, eight rebounds from Tyler Zeller, eight points, 17 rebounds and five blocks from John Henson — but the team lived and died with the performance of Barnes. It was just enough to power them to a victory.

Despite Barnes’s performance, it was another powerful defensive effort from the Badgers. The Tar Heels needed 62 possessions to score their 60 points, for a 96.7 points per 100 possessions. Only Michigan State held the Heels to a worse efficiency, at 96.3, and that game was played on a neutral

court

boat — obviously, that was an odd environment for a basketball game, and it likely influenced the offensive games of both teams.

The Badgers were able to completely neutralize North Carolina’s bench, holding P.J. Hairston, Reggie Bullock, and James Michael McAdoo to seven points on 2-of-10 shooting. John Henson, despite his excellent defensive performance, was mostly a non-factor offensively (4-for-9 shooting, eight points), and Kendall Marshall didn’t score a single point until the Badgers were forced to foul late.

As good as the defense was, the offense was consistently stagnant. The Badgers struggled to swing the ball or make passes inside, often forced to attempt to create off the dribble, the obvious weakness of the offense. Even when they did get open shots, they simply couldn’t hit. Some of the 8-for-28 three point shooting was due to forced shots late in the clock, but Wisconsin also simply missed too many open shots.

The secondary parts of the offense were there. The Badgers rebounded nine of their 31 missed shots (29%), below their season average but understandable given the imperative to prevent fast breaks for the North Carolina offense. The ball security was there as well, as the Badgers committed only four turnovers all game, their best mark of the season and the real reason the Badgers were able to compete — they attempted 19 more field goals than North Carolina. This difference easily could have negated the Tar Heels’ 24-to-6 advantage at the free throw line. If only the Badgers had made some baskets.

Jared Berggren was the the only reliable shooter of the night, hitting 6-of-12 shots for 14 points. Ben Brust added nine points on 4-of-9, Ryan Evans added 10 on 5-of-13. Mike Bruesewitz and Josh Gasser were held scoreless on six shots and simply couldn’t find any opportunities, inside or out.

In the end, though, the Badgers needed more out of their star, Jordan Taylor. Some of the blame certainly falls on the rest of the offense — we simply cannot expect the magic of Ohio State every time he steps on the floor. But Jordan Taylor is there to bail the Badgers offense out at the end of the shot clock, and whether it was on long-distance threes or, uncharacteristically, thrice at the free throw line, Taylor simply couldn’t find his range Wednesday night until too late. He simply must hit more than six shots out of 20 for the Badgers to beat the elite teams in the country.

But it is still just a November game. The Badgers are a young team, with Taylor and Rob Wilson as the only seniors on the squad. Players like Ben Brust, Josh Gasser, and Jared Berggren have so much room to grow between now and the beginning of the conference season and from then until March. North Carolina possesses one of the most talented and most experienced groups of players in the country, and despite all the flaws in the Badgers’ play Wednesday night, the game ended within two possessions.

We knew the Badgers could beat the bad, the mediocre, and the decent after their romp through the first six games. Although the Badgers will return home with their fist defeat, we now know they can play with any team in the nation, regardless of the building and regardless of the environment.