John Tonje, Steven Crowl help No. 11 Wisconsin get payback. Three takeaways from the win over Illinois
MADISON – No one should have expected Illinois to get much sympathy at the Kohl Center.
The Fighting Illini men’s basketball team is banged up and they’re battling a nasty bug that apparently has gone through the team a couple times. It’s so bad that Illinois coach Brad Underwood declined the traditional postgame handshake with Wisconsin on Tuesday night for fear of spreading it.
Underwood recapped the details of the bad spell that hit his squad following his team’s 95-74 loss to 11th-ranked Badgers. A reporter then followed up with the UW players during their postgame presser.
When it was noted that this wasn’t the same Illinois team they faced (and lost to) in December, Steven Crowl reminded the room that the Badgers are a much different bunch as well.
“I don’t think we’re the same team we were back then, so I don’t think it really matters if they were sick or healthy,” the 7-foot graduate student said. “I think we were going to handle business. We’re a different team now and we showed that tonight.”
Tuesday’s matchup was about growth for the Badgers. When they lost to the Illini Dec. 10, they were beat on the boards and had an especially tough time containing freshman point guard Kaspars Jakucionis.
The second time around the Badgers controlled the glass, held Jakucionis to six points and forced him into seven turnovers and got big nights from Crowl and graduate guard John Tonje, two players who struggled to varying degrees at Assembly Hall.
Tonje followed his 32-point outing at Purdue with a 31-point night against the Illini to become the fourth player Wisconsin history with back-to-back 30-point games. Michael Finley, Rick Olson and Clarence Sherrod are the others.
Crowl, who had nine points, zero rebounds and one assist in the first meeting, came back with a season-high 20 points while grabbing seven rebounds and dishing out five assists.
The Badgers shot 52.3% (34 of 65) and were 10 for 24 (41.7%) from three-point range. They reached 90 points in back-to-back games for the first time a run of three straight games from Dec. 14-28, 1995.
The victory coupled with Purdue’s loss to Michigan State Tuesday moved Wisconsin (21-5, 11-4) into third place in the Big Ten. Illinois, which had won nine straight against UW, dropped to 17-10 and 9-8 in the conference.
And when it comes to the Badgers’ NCAA Tournament résumé, the victory goes down as a Quad 1 win.
“Tonje was terrific, but they do what they do,” Underwood said. “I thought we did some nice things defensively and we held them under a hundred.”
Here are three takeaways from the win.
John Tonje’s buckets were timely
Tonje hit nine of 15 shots and was 3 for 5 from three-point range. He was 10 for 12 from the free throw line. The game marked the seventh time he had double-digit free throw attempts from the line.
However what made his performance notable was the timing of his buckets. He was a killer of potential rallies for the Illini.
During the final 15 minutes, Illinois at one point needed a stop to have a chance to pull within five or six points. On two other occasions the Illini needed a stop to have a chance to pull within single digits.
Each time Tonje delivered.
At the 13:58 mark he hit a tough shot on the block that made it a 63-53 game. At the 10:07 mark, he hit another tough shot down low to give the Badgers a 71-59 lead and at the 7:53 mark his three-pointer put the Badgers up, 76-63.
In the first meeting he missed 10 of 15 shots.
“He’s a pro. He’s (23) years old. He’s a sixth-year guy. He’s seen it all,” Underwood said. “Grown man. We had a few of those last year. It’s nice to have those.”
Memory of getting beat on boards sticks with UW
Though Wisconsin finished with a 39-30 led in rebounding the Badgers were dominant in that phase of the game early on. After 12 ½ minutes of play the Badgers owned a 17-6 edge on the glass.
By the time Illinois started doing a better job on its offensive glass, it was down double-digits. The Illini had seven offensive rebounds in the second half. Six of them came when they were down by 10 or more.
“What happened last game kind of fueled us a little bit,” Crowl said. “We knew it was going to be a war on the glass. Obviously them not having the two big guys healthy helped us a little bit, but we knew it was going to be a war and as team we did great.”
Badgers’ ability to clean up turnovers helps put away Illini
What’s more impressive, that UW had eight first half turnovers and still managed to score 47 points or that it had just two turnovers in the second half?
The Badgers’ low second-half turnover total has been a developing trend. They’re averaging 1.8 turnovers in the second half of the last six games. It was a point of emphasis after the break against the Illini.
“They got 11 points off those (first half) turnovers,” senior Carter Gilmore said. “That was a big discussion at halftime, talking about that, being smart with the ball … That’s one thing we’ve always talked about, the maturity of this team to go in at halftime and be player-led and talking it out as players about what need to get better at and then going out and doing it.”
