Wisconsin's first game after their win over Marquette was anything but anticlimactic, but Bo Ryan knew Monday's contest wouldn't be easy.
'We knew we were playing the best team we had played all year,' Ryan said.
The Badgers and Seahawks were tied 16-16 at the end of the first half. UNCW essentially shut down the Badgers' post game, holding sophomore forward Brian Butch to zero points and Greg Stiemsma to just two.
'It challenged the feet of some of our guys. I know they were trying to get our bigs to come out a little bit,' Ryan said. 'People have done that before, but that's why you have fifteen guys over there in uniform, and you've got to have guys on the floor that can pick up sometimes for the other guys.'
UNC Wilmington coach Brad Brownell was confident in his team's ability to defend, the Seahawks' calling card this season.
'We're a pretty good defensive team,' Brownell said. 'We bothered them with some full-court press... [We knew that] if they get into their swing, they're unbelievably hard to guard.'
UNCW kept the Badgers from finding a rhythm in the first half: Junior guard Kammron Taylor had zero points, 0-6 from the field, and junior guard Alando Tucker was held to just eight points. The Badgers were facing the toughest kind of defense they know: their own.
'They're similar to us, they help, you know, rotate quick. They're good defending the three,' Tucker said.
In the second half, Ryan had made lineup adjustments to better match his players to the Seahawks' defensive scheme: Take out the bigs.
'The group that was out there was a smaller lineup that moves their feet pretty well and matched up a lot better with that team,' Ryan said. 'Yeah, it was the same [defense] that we played on them: Keep the ball out of the post, don't get a lot in the paint and make it tough to hit shots.'
And in the second half, both teams started to make them. Wisconsin and UNCW shot over 50 percent from the field, including 7-14 three-pointers for the Seahawks, and 6-9 for Wisconsin.
UNCW led until 6:30 remained in the second half, when Tucker hit a three-pointer to tie the game, 35-35. This began a duel between the teams from outside the arc. By the end of the game, nine three-pointers had been made between the two teams.
The final tie came with six seconds left in the game, Badgers' ball. The Badgers lined up in a stack, and the inbound pass went to Taylor, who took the ball down the court and hit a three at the buzzer for the win.
'That's what we play for, to see things like that,' Tucker said.
