Jordan Hill spent the majority of Monday’s practice wearing a blue pinnie. The junior point guard, who saw his minutes diminish over the first half of UW’s season, was running Wisconsin’s scout team. He was not working alongside seniors Nigel Hayes or Vitto Brown, but was instead tasked with attacking sophomore forward Ethan Happ and senior guard Bronson Koenig off the dribble.
Tuesday night, in No. 17 Wisconsin’s (4-1 Big Ten, 15-3 overall) 68-64 win over the Michigan Wolverines (2-4, 12-7), Hill helped ice the Badgers’ victory, making three of his four free-throw attempts in the game’s final minute. But the Badgers would not have been in a position to win at all if not for Hill’s practice adversary, Koenig, scoring ten-straight points in the game’s final five minutes to give UW a lead.
In a back and forth affair Tuesday night, Koenig and the Badgers survived a scare, and Hill’s resolve throughout the season in many ways mirrored UW’s fight against the testy Wolverines.
The Badgers trailed by two with 5:31 to go in the game, until Koenig hit two layups and two 3-pointers in four possessions to give UW the lead with 3:46 remaining. From there it was Koenig, Happ, Hayes, Brown and the leader of UW’s scout team that would close out Wisconsin’s victory.
“To not get down on yourself can be tough at times,” Koenig said of Hill’s resolve. “But he’s provided us with a big spark off the bench the past couple of games and I was proud of him for knocking down the free throws.”
Wisconsin needed every bit of energy from its guards Tuesday night to come away with a victory.
After leading 26-21 at halftime, the Badgers quickly found themselves in trouble. Happ picked up his third foul less than three minutes into the half and promptly found a seat on the bench.
In his absence, UW struggled to muster up consistent offense against the Wolverines. When Happ left the floor with 17:45 to play in the game, the Badgers were up five. In the ensuing five minutes, the Badgers would score just one point, and as a result, the sophomore forward re-entered the game with his team trailing by six.
“I was just waiting for an opportunity to get back out there,” Happ said. “Really what was going through my mind was, ‘When is coach going to let me go back in?’”
He took full advantage of his opportunity.
On his second possession after returning, Happ corralled a missed free throw from freshman guard D’Mitrik Trice. Seconds later, he found Trice in the corner for a wide-open 3-pointer.
“At the start of the second half, they [Michigan] were making more hustle plays than we were,” head coach Greg Gard said. “But when we went to make our run, it started because we were on the floor, and playing physical, and embracing some of that, and ironically things started to turn for us offensively too.”
For Michigan head coach John Beilein though, Wisconsin’s run was no stroke of irony. Instead it was the reenactment of the same script he’s seen repeatedly throughout his tenure at Michigan.
“Up six with six to go, I’ve seen that movie before,” Beilein said. “They just did a great job down the stretch. We did not make some shots. They made some shots. And that’s the story.”
Wisconsin made seven of its ten field-goal attempts in the game’s final six and a half minutes. The Wolverines shot a mere 4-of-9.
But the story of Wisconsin’s victory was more than just about shot making.
Hayes struggled from the field, shooting a pedestrian 4-of-11 from the field, but snagged six rebounds, dished out three assists and, in the second half, switched onto Michigan’s leading scorer Zak Irvin, holding him to three points on 1-of-4 shooting in the game’s final 12 minutes.
Happ also struggled from the field, finishing 5-of-13 overall, but he, too, impacted the game far more than just putting the ball in the basket.
And the five points from Hill, three of which came in the final minute, won’t blow anyone away, but Gard noted that down the stretch, his reserve guard gave UW a “boost, too, on both ends of the floor.”
With the Badgers up four with 14 seconds to go, Hill caught a home run ball from Hayes to break Michigan’s press. Wisconsin certainly didn’t practice its press break that way Monday afternoon. But Tuesday night, the blue pennies were nowhere to be found, and instead, after 40 hard-fought minutes, standing at center court was a joyous group of Badgers, this time all wearing white jerseys.
