The frustration continued Sunday as the Wisconsin women's basketball team took a 70-42 loss to Michigan, as the Wolverines matched their season high in points.
It is the fourth straight loss for Wisconsin, their worst loss since an 84-54 defeat at the hands of Illinois in 2006.
We didn't come ready to play,"" Wisconsin head coach Lisa Stone said. ""Our warm-up was poor. Our start was poor. Our kids looked tired after one trip down the floor and there's no excuse for lack of energy, lack of effort. I'm very disappointed. This one was over before the [first] media [timeout].""
Michigan (3-8 Big Ten, 10-12 overall) had 10 turnovers in the first half but the
Badgers gave up 13. Wisconsin (4-8, 14-9) relied heavily on offensive contributions from bench, as they had already scored 20 of their 31 points with 6:30 to go in the second half.
The first half brought initial trouble for the Badgers - Michigan went on a 15-0 run over the course of eight and a half minutes. The Wolverines stayed at least 16 points ahead of Wisconsin for the rest of the game.
After the Badgers fell behind 9-0 in the first five minutes, Stone mixed up the
entire lineup. Wisconsin has played with six different starting lineups this season.
""We have to get back to what we do. We didn't do a whole lot of what our identity is,"" Stone said. ""We gave up 70 points, which is very uncharacteristic of us.""
At the half, the Wolverines led 32-16 and the Badgers struggled to get past a strong Michigan defense. Wisconsin put up their lowest scoring first half of the season, only shooting 28.8 percent from the field, compared to the Wolverines who shot 57.1 percent.
Jamie Russell led the Badgers in the first half with four points and had seven overall, while Rae Lin D'Alie had six boards. Alyssa Karel went scoreless in the first half for the second time this year and Lin Zastrow went scoreless.
""We told our kids to show some character and fight and battle,"" Stone said. ""It's very, very frustrating and it's a game we have to learn from. Overall, it was a disappointing trip to Ann Arbor.""
On the Michigan side, Veronica Hicks put 15 points while Stephany Skrba had a double double with 11 points and nine rebounds. Carmen Reynolds contributed ten of her own from the bench.
""We have a week now and it's a week that we probably need,"" Stone said. ""The bye week comes at a good time because we need to identify some things and wrinkle some things up offensively to find some ways to score easily and get back to what we do defensively. We need to address some things within our team. We've got to make a turn here because this was probably our worst performance of the year so far.""
The Badgers have a week off to hopefully recover from the losing streak until they travel to West Lafayette, Ind. to face Purdue on Feb. 8.
-UWbadgers contributed to this report.
