Zeller's effort against Badgers goes in vain

As Wisconsin’s plodding precision set the pace in its Tuesday evening upset of No. 2 IU at Assembly Hall, Cody Zeller seemed resolved to try to beat the Badgers at their own game.

It nearly worked, especially for the first half, but in the end the sophomore forward fell victim to the same shooting woes that knocked IU from the ranks of the Big Ten unbeaten.

“Some nights shots don’t fall,” Zeller said. “Guys are guarding on the outside. That’s how basketball is sometimes.”

He finished the game with a team-leading 23 points on 60 percent shooting. He also posted 10 rebounds, another team high, and locked down Badger big man Jared Berggren.

Berggren, Wisconsin’s leading scorer with 13.4 points per game entering Tuesday, had only five points on 2-of-8 shooting and was a nonfactor.

Zeller almost singlehandedly kept the Hoosiers afloat in the first half, as Wisconsin dictated the game’s tempo and his teammates struggled with their shooting.

Zeller did not miss a single shot in the first half, scoring 18 points and going a perfect 8-for-8 from the field to give IU a scant 32-31 halftime lead. Outside of Zeller, the team shot only 25 percent in the period.

“I just wanted to be aggressive and take what the defense gives me,” Zeller said. “(You have) got to attack and get to the line.”

Starting at the 14:05 mark in the first half, when Zeller’s layup gave him seven points and IU a 12-9 lead, he had more than half his team’s points for a span of more than 19 minutes between the two halves.

After halftime, Zeller’s contributions in the contest took on a different form.

The IU shooting struggles continued into the second half, even striking Zeller when he missed his first six shots of the half.

“They were clogging up the middle more,” Zeller said. “Shots stopped falling.”

Even with his struggles on offense in the second half, Zeller’s presence continued to have an impact. Wisconsin primarily settled for long jump shots for much of the game, only driving into the paint every so often.

The problem for IU, though, was that Wisconsin sank several timely jump shots and drawed fouls on the drives, building a second-half lead into double digits.

IU chipped away at the lead as the half wore on, Zeller playing the vast majority of the period, pulling down several defensive rebounds and getting to the free throw line for four shots.

“He still got the shots, got to the foul line, but we didn’t do a great job of rebounding the ball when he missed,” IU Coach Tom Crean said.

IU’s shooting woes were simply too much, though. Zeller finally broke his own slump on a dunk with 16 seconds remaining, but by then, IU’s lack of shooting had essentially put the game in garbage time, his effort ultimately all for naught.

“Cody had a tremendous first half,” Crean said. “They had nobody, really, that could guard him. They still didn’t in the second half. They just went with more pressure.”