It was far from pretty, but the Wisconsin men’s basketball team (8-2 overall) team finally picked up the non-conference win it needed as it defeated UNLV (9-2) 62-51 Saturday.
Wisconsin shot just 37 percent from the field as a team, but sophomore guard Ben Brust saved them from a far worse number, finishing the afternoon with a career-high 25 points on 8-of-9 shooting, including a 7-for-7 mark from behind the three-point line.
“Ben makes close to half of our field goals. Without that we don’t win,” senior guard Jordan Taylor said. “Defensively it was a good effort, and Ben took it over on the offensive end. We won. Doesn’t matter how you get it done.”
“The past three games, a lot of them felt good, they just weren’t going in,” Brust said after tying his own school record from 3-point range. “You just have to have shooters amnesia and just keep firing to shoot out of it.”
Beyond the record-setting shooting day by Brust, the Badger defense stifled a high-powered Rebel offense that scored 90 in a win over North Carolina earlier in the year. UNLV sophomore forward Mike Moser, who came into Saturday averaging 15.8 points and 12.5 rebounds per game, only managed four points, picking up nine of his 11 rebounds on the defensive glass.
Despite struggling on the boards in recent games, UW dominated on Saturday, picking up 10 offensive rebounds against UNLV and putting up eight more shots than the Runnin’ Rebels.
“The fact that [UNLV] did not have an offensive rebound in the first half, I thought our guys did a good job of putting bodies on them,” UW head coach Bo Ryan said. “We battled them on the glass, I can take that.”
That work on the defensive end ultimately allowed Wisconsin to overcome a poor shooting performance in addition to a tough day for Taylor. The Badgers’ preseason All-American point guard was shadowed on the offensive end the entire contest, finishing 0-for-10 from the field with just four points. Taylor also finished with an uncharacteristic three turnovers despite managing six assists.
Ultimately, UNLV managed only one player in double digits scoring, as senior forward Chase Stanback led the way with 16 points on 5-of-9 shooting. Still, that was a far cry from the 25 points he threw down on the Badgers in UNLV’s 68-65 win last season in Las Vegas.
“They are a very talented team; they score close to 80 or 90 points a game,” junior forward Mike Bruesewitz said. “Something I think we need to continue to do is to hang our hat on our defense and keep holding those high scoring teams within our threshold and make sure we can take care of business that way.”
Although Brust was certainly the headline, the re-emergence of Bruesewitz and sophomore guard Josh Gasser were perhaps the most encouraging signs. Bruesewitz rebounded from recent struggles to have a solid afternoon, showing much more energy on both ends of the floor than he had shown over the last few games. His six points and team-high 10 rebounds were crucial for a Badger team that has not done the little things quite well as of late. And having struggled offensively while being hampered by a sore right wrist, Gasser made his presence known from the get-go, finishing with six points and eight rebounds at the second guard spot.
“I felt like I was able to put the ball on the floor a little bit against their bigger guys,” Bruesewitz said. “That takes some pressuring off Jordan, trying to get in the lane. I was able to create some stuff for myself and for my teammates.”
