Leading scorers fail to make impacts Thursday

On a night when Wisconsin’s All-American senior guard Jordan Taylor was kept in check by the IU defense, it was the role players of the Badgers who made the difference Thursday evening.

The Badgers overcame a 5-of-14 performance by Taylor as sophomore guard Ben Brust came off the No. 25 Wisconsin (17-5, 6-3) bench to score 13 points and spark a 57-50 victory against the No. 16/17 Hoosiers (16-5, 4-5) at the Kohl Center.

In a game that saw both teams well below their normal offensive output, it was the bench for the Badgers that was the deciding factor down the stretch.

Carrying the load for the Badgers in the second half was Brust who had 10 points after halftime, including a pair of three-pointers that gave Wisconsin the lead.

Brust came into Thursday night’s game against the Hoosiers as
the third-leading scoring reserve off the bench in the Big Ten conference.

However, he had only scored in double figures twice since Dec. 10 and was two for his last 11 from 3-point land.

The first three-pointer by Brust came after IU took its biggest lead of the second half at 36-31 with 13:13 remaining.

Three minutes later, it was Brust’s turn again from the right wing this time, giving the Badgers their first lead of the second half at 41-39.

“Brust hit some big shots,” senior guard Verdell Jones III said. “We over-helped a couple times, and he hit some
big shots.”

Five Badgers scored at least eight points, which helped with Taylor missing three of his last 12 from the field and not connecting on any his five three-point attempts.

Last year against IU, Taylor tore up the Hoosiers’ defense with 39 points on 7-of-8 shooting from behind the arc.

Taylor’s final basket of the game Thursday came at the 13:24 mark of the second half as IU’s sophomore duo of Victor Oladipo and Will Sheehey spent a majority of the game guarding the Badgers’ captain.

“We play team defense as much as we can at Indiana,” IU Coach Tom Crean said. “We know who the other best players are, but they’ve got a team full of guys, and I thought our team defense for the most part was very good.”

With neither team’s leading scorers providing their normal offensive output, the Badgers made the hustle plays in the game’s final two minutes.

IU stopped Wisconsin on three straight possessions, but each time, the Badgers corralled the rebound and were able to hit their final six free throws to seal the victory.

“They got a couple of big rebounds at the end,” Crean said. “We struggled getting those balls, they didn’t. When a game is that tight and that competitive between two teams, it comes down to a couple of things, and their offensive rebounds were those things.”