Having started off the week with a dismal effort in Wednesday’s loss to Virginia, Wisconsin men’s basketball got back on track quickly Sunday as it cruised to an 81-56 win over previously undefeated California.
Junior guard Ben Brust led the scoring for the Badgers (5-3 overall) with a season-high 22 points on 9-of-13 shooting, but it was once again the energy of freshman forward Sam Dekker off the bench that sparked the Badgers’ first-half outburst.
Dekker checked in for the first time with 16:19 left in the half and UW still scoreless. When the Sheboygan, Wis., native was replaced by sophomore forward Frank Kaminsky less than four minutes later, the 2-0 California lead had turned into an 11-point Wisconsin advantage, Dekker contributing to 10 of the Badgers’ 15 points during the run.
“Dekker was good,” California head coach Mike Montgomery said. “He’s going to be a real nice player.”
“[Dekker] was able to get a couple creases and he is pretty good at finishing around the basket,” Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan said. “He’s just learning, but he did give us a good spark.”
The Badgers got plenty of production up and down the lineup on their way to a third 80-point effort in the season’s first eight games. Brust and Dekker were joined in double figures by redshirt senior forward Ryan Evans and fellow senior Jared Berggren, who followed an inconsistent effort against Virginia with an 18-point, eight-rebound performance that was one of the best Berggren has had thus far this season.
“There were a lot of the same looks [as the looks against Virginia],” Brust said of the Badgers’ shooting. “It’s just a matter of stepping up to the plate and finishing the plays.”
While the Golden Bears (6-1) would climb back within seven later in the opening half, a 12-0 run by Wisconsin in response effectively ended any hopes California had of leaving Madison unscathed. The Badgers would finish the half with a 13-point cushion and sailed smoothly to victory from there, never trailing by less than 17 over the final 15 minutes of play.
“They just outplayed us,” California junior guard Allen Crabbe said. “We just dug ourselves too deep a hole in the first half.”
Having struggled most of the season on both the offensive and defensive glass, UW finally had a good effort in the trenches, outrebounding a California team that entered the game averaging over 40 rebounds per game. The Badgers converted their 14 offensive rebounds into 18 second-chance points, piling on with another 25 points on 23 California turnovers.
“We took care of the small stuff,” senior forward Mike Bruesewitz said. “The team that plays harder generally wins and that’s what we did tonight.”
Though Wisconsin was able to hold most of the Cal attack in check, Crabbe was an exception. The Los Angeles native was responsible for nearly half of the Bears’ points, finishing with 25 on 8-of-15 from the field. His teammate in the backcourt, junior Justin Cobbs, was not as fortunate. After averaging over 20 points per game coming in, Cobbs was held to just 11 on 3-of-10 shooting, adding insult to injury with seven turnovers and zero assists.
“I thought we did a pretty good job on Cobbs because he has been scoring like crazy,” Ryan said. “We did a better job of sticking to our rules, make a guy make a jump shot rather than a layup or a power move at the basket.”
Having finally gotten their first non-conference win over a major conference opponent, the Badgers now have just one final tune-up Tuesday against Nebraska-Omaha before next Saturday’s rivalry game against Marquette in Milwaukee.
But for a Badger team that has failed to get on more than a two-game winning streak over the first three-plus weeks of the season, another tune-up before the duel with the Golden Eagles is certainly much needed.
