Wisconsin was down one point to Iowa when the two teams went into halftime. After the break, it was almost all Badgers, scoring 14 more points than Iowa the rest of the way. After the game, Hawkeyes head coach Ben McCollum took to the podium for his post-game press conference, and his quote about Wisconsin will make any Badger fan smile and chuckle.
McCollum said, "Letting Boyd get downhill to his left was not part of the game plan. I won't tell you the game plan in case we have to play them again, because the game plan was actually pretty good; we just didn't execute it."
Ben McCollum says Iowa's game plan wasn't to let Boyd get to his left all night long
Related: Nick Boyd showed vs. Iowa why Wisconsin could be a problem in March
What a great quote for Wisconsin. McCollum basically admits that Boyd ripped the game plan to shreds and made Iowa play on its heels for the entire game, but especially the second half. When a coach says that they had a game plan but it wasn't executed, that's simply a way of saying, "The other team controlled the game."
McCollum would later say that part of the problem with defending Wisconsin is that since all five guys can shoot the three, it leaves lots of spacing for Boyd to work. Defenses have to make decisions: do they bring on help defense for Boyd and thus expose the shooters, or do they go one-on-one and hope their best defender can take on Boyd?
McCollum and Iowa clearly were forced into the second one, and Boyd made them pay with 27 points. However, when they tried to adapt, Boyd found other players to score and had 10 assists. Boyd's speed was too tough to guard, and he had Iowa's defense in shambles all game.
The best basketball needs to be played at the end of the season, and that's exactly what Wisconsin is doing, and what Nick Boyd in particular is doing. He was a magician tonight, and he has successfully raised Wisconsin's March ceiling.