Nicole Bauman played her heart out for UW, scoring a career-high 31 points and setting a school record with eight 3-pointers, but it wasn’t enough as Wisconsin (3-8 Big Ten, 7-14 overall) lost 85-73 to Ohio State (7-3, 15-7) in their fourth consecutive defeat.
“We ran into a hot team,” said head coach Bobbie Kelsey. “They couldn’t miss in the first half. Then, we picked up our scoring in the second half, but they kept up their scoring.”
By halftime, Bauman had almost half of UW’s 33 points as she finished with 16 in the first half. She continued to play well in the second half, hitting five 3-pointers to keep the Badgers in the game.
Ohio State put up big offensive numbers as freshman guard Kelsey Mitchell, the nation’s leading scorer, finished with 23 points for the Buckeyes. She came into tonight’s matchup averaging 25.8 points per game. Junior guard Ameryst Alston, who was averaging 20.7 points per game, finished with 19 points.
Kelsey was unhappy with the way UW kept leaving Mitchell open and stressed that it’s tough to cover two high scorers.
“When you have another 20-point scorer in the game it’s hard to slow [Mitchell] down and leave somebody, but there were a couple times where we didn’t know where Mitchell was,” Kelsey said. “With a player like her, you really got to be urgent about where she is at all times.”
The Buckeyes started the game out strong, putting up 46 points in the first half and shooting 51.4 percent from the field.
The Badgers struggled once again in the first half shooting only 35.3 percent from the field and shot only 5-13 from 3-point range. Three of those came from Bauman.
UW senior guard AnnMarie Brown scored 10 points while senior forward Cassie Rochel finished with eight points. UW tied a school record with 12 3-pointers in the game.
Wisconsin got within seven of Ohio State trailing 69-62 with less than seven minutes to play. However, Ohio State responded quickly with a 3-pointer by Mitchell to extend the lead to 10 and give the momentum back to the Buckeyes.
“We did a great job passing to open players but we didn’t hit open shots,” Kelsey said. “We had good looks, but they hit theirs and we didn’t hit ours. We need to get in the gym and keep taking reps because the only way we’re going to get confident taking those shots is if we shoot them all the time.”
Wisconsin’s next game is at Illinois this Sunday at 2 p.m.
