In late January, the Wisconsin women’s basketball team (4-8 Big Ten, 8-16 overall) pulled off a string of quality conference wins against Northwestern, Minnesota and Michigan to pull itself right into the middle of the Big Ten standings.
However, a nail-biting overtime loss at home to Iowa Feb. 2 has since troubled the Badgers. The loss to the Hawkeyes started a three-game losing streak, two of which were against ranked teams.
The team struggled with poor shooting and turnovers during parts of the losing streak and looks to reverse this trend Thursday against Michigan State (7-5, 15-10) as part of the Play 4Kay Breast Cancer Awareness Initiative in honor of former N.C. State coach Kay Yow.
The Badgers are unsurprisingly embracing the week off, as the team hasn’t played since last Thursday’s loss to No. 21 Penn State. Wisconsin head coach Bobbie Kelsey said she has stressed to her team the importance of learning from the tape, with not as much physical practicing over the break.
“We’ve been spending a lot of time watching video, just learning stuff, not necessarily team practices,” Kelsey said, while also mentioning she has given the team two days off over the course of the brief break from action.
Senior forward Anya Covington, who sat out a week because of chest pains before returning last Thursday and scoring 20 points, couldn’t agree more about the extra days off.
“It’s nice, it’s been really nice,” she said. “We’ve been getting extra shooting in the gym and just building our chemistry, which we need.”
Wisconsin has turned the ball over an average of 18.6 times during its three-game losing streak and Kelsey has credited this to below-average guard play and not switching well enough on the defensive end.
“The guard play was not good,” Kelsey said of last Thursday’s game. “It’s the same story, just certain people really need to buckle down. It’s not everybody, but we do a lot of switching, so you need to guard anybody. You have to be able to stop everyone or at least make it hard for them to get a clean look [after switching].”
Wisconsin will be required to step it up while switching on defense Thursday, as Michigan State senior guard Porsche Poole has been unstoppable in her last five games. Poole has torn opposing Big Ten defenses apart recently, scoring 19 or more points in her last five games and averaging 25.8 points per game over the last two weeks.
“We’re just going to have to limit her touches and make it hard for her,” Kelsey said of Poole. “She’s a great player, she does a lot for her team.”
Poole averages 13.4 points per game on the season.
As the Badgers find themselves in the home stretch Kelsey says simply playing hard these last couple of weeks will get the team where it needs to be and prepare them well enough for the upcoming Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis.
“They have to know that anything is possible,” Kelsey said. “We just continue to give it all you have.”
