For the first 26 and a half minutes Wednesday night, the Wisconsin women's basketball team held firm to a lead against visiting Indiana. With 13:22 left in the second half, however, the Hoosiers pulled ahead for the first time in the contest.
At the 9:06 mark, senior forward Lin Zastrow drove to the basket. But instead of attacking the rim, Zastrow took a page out of teammate senior guard Alyssa Karel's playbook, pulling up and hitting the fade away two. The shot put the Badgers ahead 49-47 and Wisconsin never trailed again, winning 65-57.
""I learn from the best,"" Zastrow said referring to Karel. ""I think it was more like I was tired, and I decided I needed to pull up, and if I went all the way, I might not make it.""
Those points were just two of Zastrow's team-high 21 on the evening. In her last game as a Badger on the Kohl Center court, the senior also added six rebounds.
Meanwhile, Karel stole Zastrow's usual thunder under the rim, grabbing a career-high eight rebounds. Karel added 12 points in 38 minutes on the court.
Karel and the Badgers stormed out to an 11-2 lead over Indiana in the first three minutes. The team appeared full of confidence and determined to repeat a 26-point drubbing of the Hoosiers just over two weeks ago.
Indiana slowly began to gain some confidence of their own, however, throughout the end of the half as the Badgers became a turnover machine. Wisconsin gave up the ball eight times in the first half and 20 times overall.
""The key to the game was the fact that we turned it over,"" head coach Lisa Stone said. ""When we don't turn the ball over, we're very, very good.""
A clutch shot at the buzzer for the Hoosiers just before the end of the first half put Indiana down just four heading into the locker room.
Over the first seven minutes of the second half, the Hoosiers simply out-hustled and out-shot the Badgers. The Indiana lead lasted for just over four minutes however, before the Wisconsin seniors took control on their final night in front of the home crowd.
While the turnover margin was uncharacteristically high for the Badgers Wednesday, Wisconsin redeemed itself with 48.8 percent shooting from the floor on the night. The team also converted 18-of-22 free throws, including 16 in the second half.
Although the Hoosiers have struggled mightily as a team this season, the Badgers knew coming in they could not afford to ignore senior guard Jori Davis. The Rochester, N.Y. native came into Wednesday evening averaging over 19 points per game, third best in the Big Ten.
Wisconsin held Davis to just two points in the first half however, and despite a second-half outburst, the Badgers kept Davis to a sub-average 17.
The team admitted the game was not its best performance, but the play was good enough for a win.
""Certain aspects of the game were uglier than others,"" Karel said. ""But we're not going to look back and say, ‘Oh, we had 20 turnovers in our last game at the Kohl Center.' We're going to say we won. And so that's a good feeling.""
