With his team up by 11 and threatening to open the floodgates on Nebraska midway through the second half, Vitto Brown added an exclamation point to his career night.
After freshman forward Alex Illikainen corralled an offensive rebound, he dished it off to Brown, who finished the play off with a thunderous, one-handed flush. His dunk brought the Kohl Center crowd, which was mostly lethargic when former Badger Duje Dukan wasn’t being shown on the big screen, to its feet and was part of a 20-9 run that put away the Cornhuskers for good.
Powered by Brown’s big night, a strong showing from junior forward Nigel Hayes and a stellar night from 3-point range, Wisconsin (7-4 Big Ten, 15-9 overall) downed Nebraska 72-61 Wednesday night at the Kohl Center for its sixth straight win.
Despite a sluggish start to the first half of offense, the Badgers eventually found their stroke, allowing them to spend a majority of the second half with a comfortable lead.
“Whenever you’re working with guys who are 18 to 22, you know that not every game is going to be perfect,” UW interim head coach Greg Gard said. “For us to be able to rally and surround each other I thought was a sign, hopefully, in the right direction of having different guys step up and help each other out as we continue to grow together as a team.”
Brown in particular impressed, scoring a career-high 18 points, including 12 in the first half. The junior forward went 6 of 7 from the field, including 3 of 3 from 3-point range.
Hayes and Brown combined to score UW’s first 16 points and were the engine of the offense all game long. Brown’s contributions were especially key on a night where redshirt freshman forward Ethan Happ scored just two points and was largely ineffective on offense.
“It's about time, because I was ready to rough him up. I told him to meet me outside the locker room,” Hayes said of Brown’s performance. “Seriously though, that's what we expect. We know he can play like that. I told him that in the beginning of the year, that's what we expect from him. He knows he can play like that. He just has to keep playing with the confidence that he has. He knows he has the ability and teams are going to keep playing off of him.”
As a team, the Badgers thrived from deep, going 11 of 18 on 3-pointers.
For a second straight game, Wisconsin got an ample amount of open looks from behind the arc and showed no hesitation in hoisting up shots.
Though he did switch to man-to-man defense briefly in the first half, Nebraska head coach Tim Miles stuck with a 2-3 zone for almost the entirety of the game, allowing the Badgers to continue to get good chances from deep, and, just like they did against Ohio State, they took advantage.
“We're just taking advantage of the way that people are playing us,” Hayes said. “Going back to the beginning of the year, we weren't the best team with our spacing. That was a problem for us. With the way we've been playing after that point, teams are now trying to double the post and get the ball out of our hands or go zone to prevent that in the beginning. We just make sure that we're always ready to shoot and we can always shoot the ball.”
Hayes led all scorers with 20 points on 7-of-14 shooting. Junior guard Bronson Koenig added 12 points and redshirt junior guard Zak Showalter chipped in 10 to round out UW scorers that reached double digits.
Freshman guard Glynn Watson Jr. finished with 16 points and junior guard Andrew White III added 10 of his own to lead the way for the Cornhuskers.
Wisconsin finished the night 51.2 percent from the field with 11 turnovers, while Nebraska shot 40.7 percent and turned it over 10 times.
With their two-game homestand over, the Badgers will take their winning streak out on the road, starting with a matchup in College Park this Saturday against No. 2 Maryland at 5:30 p.m.
