Halftime: Wisconsin 34, IU 31

After grabbing as much as a six-point lead midway through the first half, the IU men’s basketball team fell victim to a 10-0 Wisconsin run to fall behind 34-31 going into the locker room in the semifinals of the Big Ten Tournament.

Early on, much of the battle took place in the paint. The Badgers managed to score their first 18 points from the paint before stretching out the IU defense and scoring their next 16 from outside, including 12 off 3-pointers.

Sophomore forward Cody Zeller managed just six points in the first half while struggling to get much going down low. He was 2-of-4 from the field and managed to two two fouls on Wisconsin’s big man Jared Berggren, sending him to the bench with 7:55 left in the half.

Zeller went just 2-of-4 from the charity stripe in both trips, though.

From there, down 22-16, Wisconsin would go on to score 10-straight points, utilizing the 3-pointer to take the lead. Wisconsin’s Ben Brust hit one with 6:24 left in the half to take the lead, and then Mike Bruesewitz followed to cap off the run.

Zeller managed a tough layup inside to stop the bleeding for a moment, but George Marshall followed with the first of his two 3-pointers.

Zeller and junior guard Victor Oladipo grabbed a few late buckets, and senior forward Christian Watford hit a fade-away 3-pointer from the left wing, while trying to draw a foul to no avail, to pull the Hoosiers within just three points to close the half.

-Nathan Brown