Wisconsin Basketball: Badgers Stay Red Hot from 3 & Cruise to Easy Win
By Paul Bretl
The Wisconsin basketball team stays red-hot from 3 as they cruise to an easy win over the No. 23 Louisville Cardinals.
The Wisconsin basketball team entered Saturday’s matchup with Louisville as a decent 3-point shooting team. During their first six games, they had made just under 40 percent of their 3-point attempts, which ranked 33rd nationally and attempted on average 21 3-pointers per game.
However, against the 23rd ranked Louisville Cardinals, who admittedly were short-handed without their top-scorer Carlik Jones, the Badgers put on a clinic from deep, taking more attempts than what they normally do and hitting them at a ridiculous clip–the second straight game that Wisconsin was on fire from 3.
D’Mitrick Trice started the game off hot from beyond the arc, hitting his first three shots from 3 and scoring nine of the Badgers’ first 12 points. From that point on, just about everyone else on the team joined in on the fun, and the route was on.
When it was all said and done, Wisconsin had hit 64 percent of their 25 shots from deep, including at least one 3-pointer from eight different players. Trice, Brad Davison, and Trevor Anderson led the team with each player making three 3-pointers. The last time the Badgers hit at least 60 percent of their 3-point attempts came in November of 2018 against Oklahoma when they made 63.6 percent of their shots from deep on 22 attempts.
This performance from the Badgers was on the heels of another fine shooting night this past Tuesday against Loyola when Wisconsin made over 55 percent of their 3-point shots on 18 attempts.
Louisville, however, didn’t have the same fortune. The Cardinals made only 35.7 percent of their shots from downtown on just 14 attempts. So as you can imagine, the Badgers rolled. This game was never close as Wisconsin jumped out to a 25-4 lead in the first half and took a 44-18 lead into halftime. The Badgers would outscore Louisville in the second half as well — although not as badly — and cruised to a 37 point victory, 85 to 48.
Led by Micah Potter’s 20 point campaign, the Badgers had three other players reach double-figures as Aleem Ford posted 12 points, Anderson scored 11, and Davison dropped 10. Trice, Nate Reuvers, and Johnny Davis all scored at least seven points, and in total, 10 Badgers ended the game with at least one bucket.
Sure, as I mentioned above, Louisville was without Jones, who is averaging over 17 points per game this season, but beating a ranked opponent by nearly 40 points is nothing to turn your nose up at either. Wisconsin will now enter conference play at 6-1 with Nebraska next up on the schedule and the Badgers will head into that game shooting lights out from deep their last two games.