The No. 11 Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team entered Fiserv Forum on Saturday with the goal of keeping their three-game winning streak over their in-state rival, the No. 5 Marquette Golden Eagles. But they were unable to contain Marquette star Kam Jones and his pesky cast of supporting scorers. The Badgers head back to Madison having relinquished their in-state bragging rights, falling 88-74 in front of a packed arena.
Wisconsin, now 8-2 (0-1 Big Ten), stayed afloat in a back-and-forth first half but couldn’t right the ship after receiving a second-half sucker punch from the country’s fifth-ranked team. In Marquette’s second-half domination, the Shaka Smart-led Golden Eagles left little room for doubt in determining the state’s best team, for now.
On an afternoon in which Wisconsin had to play smart, sound basketball, the Badgers uncharacteristically turned the ball over 16 times. Marquette’s intense defense put pressure on Wisconsin, consistently turning Badger miscues into Golden Eagle points.
Jones gave Wisconsin’s defense the most trouble, casually collecting 32 points in a variety of facets. The 6-foot-4 senior shot 12-21 from the field and 3-7 from three, getting to the lane, floating mid-range runners and hitting threes. Jones did this all while finding open teammates, good enough for six assists.
“He’s strong, he’s physical, he’s mature,” Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard said about Jones after the game. “But I think the biggest thing is just what’s between his ears, the mental part of it, that he lets the game come to him and doesn’t try and force it.”
Smart, Marquette’s head coach, offered a much more blunt synopsis of his star.
“In my opinion, he’s the best guard in the country,” he said.
Along with Jones’ outburst, Marquette received 13 points from senior forward David Joplin and 12 apiece from guards Stevie Mitchell and Chase Ross, while forward Ben Gold added nine.
Meanwhile, Wisconsin guard Max Klesmit led the Badgers in scoring, contributing 22 points. Klesmit found confidence early, hitting two threes in the game's opening minutes before finishing 6-11 from beyond the arc and 6-12 overall. After a quiet first half, guard John Blackwell finished with 17 points on 7-11 shooting, with three rebounds and three assists. The other guard, John Tonje, added 14 points on 3-11 shooting, while grabbing six rebounds.
In a first half where neither team pulled away, Tonje led Wisconsin with 12 points followed by Klesmit, who scored 11. Facing a tough Marquette defense, Tonje used his knack to get to the free-throw line and drove fiercely at Golden Eagle defenders to draw fouls. Seven of his first-half points came at the line.
In the midst of a first-half chess match, the Badgers also received a boost from forward Carter Gilmore, who scored three points, grabbed six rebounds and dished out a career-high four assists. In a scrappy game, Gilmore provided the spark needed to duel with Marquette.
Wisconsin led 39-37 at halftime, but in the second half, the Badgers couldn’t keep the air in the tires that kept them moving in the first half.
After Tonje picked up his third foul and was forced out of the game with 17:23 left, Marquette took immediate advantage of Wisconsin playing without its primary points generator, putting the Badgers on their heels and flipping the game.
The Golden Eagles went on a quick 7-2 run, turning up the pressure, forcing Gard to call a timeout. Suddenly, Marquette’s home crowd came fully alive.
Next, as Marquette took all momentum, Wisconsin was faced with the challenges of containing a heating-up Golden Eagle offense and scoring against their suffocating, high-energy defense. In return, they turned over the ball seven times in 14 possessions, putting the game squarely in control of Marquette.
The turnovers, Gard said, “created an avalanche of us getting in transition defensively.”
“They took advantage of that, were able to get to the rim, and then got confidence going from that,” Gard said. “And then we were playing on our heels for the rest of the second half after that.”
Over this stretch, the game shifted from a 45-44 Wisconsin advantage to a 61-53 Marquette lead.
From there, the Marquette onslaught continued, and even as Wisconsin stayed within striking distance, a Badgers comeback never seemed realistic.
After a trying week, Wisconsin is now the loser of two games in a row. In the midst of enduring the up-and-down nature of a college basketball season, the Badgers will get right back on the horse with a conference showdown at Illinois on Tuesday.
“After this week, the ending message is we don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves,” Gard said. “We gotta get better and turn around and play in two days again in Illinois.”
