Wisconsin Basketball: Badgers seek season sweep of Michigan in Ann Arbor

Wisconsin Basketball heads to Ann Arbor in pursuit of a seventh straight win Saturday. Can the Badgers pull off another major upset over the Wolverines?

Wisconsin heads into this weekend’s showdown with Michigan in a very different place than they were in the last time these two Big Ten powers collided.

Leading up to their January 19 meeting with the Wolverines in Madison, the Badgers had lost five of their last eight games, including two straight heartbreakers to Purdue and Maryland. The desperation of the team- as well as the fan base- for an upset win against Michigan to turn Wisconsin’s season around was intense.

In a game that will be remembered in Wisconsin for quite some time, the Badgers stepped up and seized that opportunity for a season-altering momentum boost, handing the Wolverines their first loss of the season. As expected, that upset win has proven to be exactly what the doctor ordered for Wisconsin.

The Badgers are now seeking their seventh straight win in Round Two against the first place Wolverines on Saturday, and should they succeed, they will put themselves in a tie with them at the top of the conference.

However, that task will by no means be an easy one. Michigan has been relatively sharp recently as well, going 4-1 since that defeat in Madison with wins on the road against Indiana and Rutgers and at home against Ohio State and Minnesota. The Wolverines have also won 20 straight contests at home in the Crisler Center, so recent history definitely will not be on Wisconsin’s side on Saturday.

Will the Badgers keep the good times rolling, or will they finally find themselves back in the loss column?

Projected starters

No. 19 WISCONSIN (17-6)

G – D’Mitrik Trice – SO (13.4 ppg)

G – Brad Davison- SO (11.2 ppg)

F – Khalil Iverson – SR (4.8 ppg)

F – Nathan Reuvers – SO (8.3 ppg)

C – Ethan Happ – SR (18.3 ppg)

No. 7 MICHIGAN (21-2)

G – Zavier Simpson – JR (9.2 ppg)

G – Jordan Poole – SO (12.9 ppg)

G – Charles Matthews – SR (12.5 ppg)

F – Ignas Brazdeikis – FR (15.5 ppg)

C – Jon Teske – JR (8.8 ppg)

Keys to the game and prediction

The outcome of this one will depend on who wins the battle between two outstanding defenses.

Wisconsin was excellent defensively in the last meeting, forcing 16 turnovers and holding Michigan to just 54 points. John Beilein’s star trio of Ignas Brazdeikis, Jordan Poole, and Charles Matthews combined to go a mere 8-25 from the field in the loss.

The Badgers have continued their superb play on that side of the floor throughout their winning streak. They have allowed their opponents to score an average of just 53.8 points over their last six, and if they are successful in finding a way to hold the Wolverines to a total close to that once again and force them into a similar amount of turnovers, we will likely be celebrating a season sweep of Michigan on Saturday afternoon.

However, I’m not sure how likely it is that Brazdeikis, Poole, and Matthew will once again play so poorly, or that the Wolverines (the nation’s second-best team in terms of total turnovers) will be so careless with the ball again.

Of course, the Wolverines aren’t too shabby themselves on defense and will give this hot Wisconsin team its biggest test since the last meeting between these squads. They have held their opponents to just 57.3 points on average throughout Big Ten play, a mark that is good for second in the conference, and also rank fourth in league play in opponent turnovers.

Upsetting Michigan at the Kohl Center was certainly impressive, but taking them down on their home court, especially when the Wolverines will be fired up to avenge that loss, is going to be a different animal entirely. I would expect that the Badgers will need to hit more than the five threes and go to the line more than nine times, which were both their totals in the January 19 meeting. Unfortunately, achieving those goals will be difficult against a Michigan team that does not allow many long-range attempts or shoot itself in the foot by fouling very often.

With two defenses of this caliber, I suspect we will witness another back and forth, Big Ten rock fight of the type we saw in Wisconsin’s win over Minnesota. The Badgers will be in this thing until the end, but this just feels like the moment where they are going to come crashing back to earth. In addition to the home court advantage they will enjoy, the Wolverines are looking confident coming off of a very strong performance at Rutgers and will be motivated to put down the team that handed them their first loss of the year.

Badgers fall, 62-57.

All stats courtesy of Sports-Reference.com