UW Beats Pacific, Wins Eighth in a Row
December 23, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Kammron Taylor led four Wisconsin players in double figures with 17 points as No. 4 Wisconsin rolled past Pacific, 83-47, Saturday night at the Kohl Center.
Alando Tucker scored 15 and Brian Butch and Joe Krabbenhoft tallied 11 for the Badgers, who have now won eight in a row and are 12-1 to start a season for the seventh time in school history. Pacific has lost six in a row and is 3-9.
As it has for most of the season, Wisconsin got out of the gates quickly. The Badgers hit nine of their first 10 shots and led 20-4 a little more than seven minutes into the contest. It was the seventh time in 13 games UW has jumped out to a lead of eight points or more in the opening minutes this year.
Six different Badgers scored points during the run. Taylor and Tucker hit back-to-back 3 's to highlight the rally.
Pacific cut the lead to 30-21 with two free throws by Anthony Esparza with three minutes remaining in the first half. Krabbenhoft answered with one of UW's season-high nine 3-pointers and the Badgers took a 36-24 halftime lead.
Steffan Johnson was 5-of-10 from the field in the first half to pace Pacific. He had half his team's points going into the break and finished with a team-high 16.
Anthony Brown, the Tigers leading scorer heading into the contest at nearly 16 points per game, was held scoreless in the first half and didn't record his first points until the 13:25 point of the second. He finished with five points.
Wisconsin went on a 34-10 run that spanned nearly 12 minutes of the second half and led 72-39 with 6:42 left to play. UW made 20 free throws in the final 20 minutes and held Pacific to just seven, second-half rebounds.
The Badgers were 26-of-32 from the free-throw line in the contest compared to 6-of-11 for Pacific and outrebounded the Tigers 40-21.
The Badgers have now won five games in a row against 2006 NCAA tournament participants.
Wisconsin Head Coach Bo Ryan Post-Game Quotes
On the challenge of playing a game while finals going on: 'Just watching this team play, every game that we were able to receive on tape, they were close games, for the most part it was a stretch where a couple teams got away from them, a couple games that they had some tough luck at the end. But that's Pacific. It's still the winningest program in California in like the last five years. They still know how to win games, they're going to be tough in their league, but they are really young and I thought this was going to be one of those types of games where if we didn't get into them, try to take them out of any kind of comfort zone on offense. We saw Johnson shooting on tape, we saw Morgan and all the rest of the guys, they're a great three-point shooting team. You hear about all these stories over the years of teams after finals and teams go in and I think one year Penn beat Southern Cal by 40. And Penn plays like Pacific, it was at Southern Cal. And sometimes you're on a roll; we couldn 't let them get into any kind of comfort zone. But we say that for every game and some teams it may be easier to come back on but this was the kind of team we did not need to get behind tonight.'
On the start of the game: 'They executed. I can't say that we told them different things before this game that we did any other game it's just each time, we're trying to touch the post, turn the ball, make the hard cuts. We don 't make it difficult. I could make up stuff as you go along, the guys played well and oh well we told them this, this time ' I can't do that, never have, never will. It was me saying the same things and the players do the same thing. We know what we want to do. Every player does when they go out on the court, every team does and then you have to do go it. We happened to do that tonight.'
Pacific Head Coach Bob Thomason Post-Game Quotes
On Pacific cutting the lead to single digits in the second half: 'I don 't think it was ever real serious. There were times we hung in there 10 to eight points but it didn't seem to me to be a real serious eight to 10 points. I think they had command pretty much all the way. We were doing a really poor job scoring inside and Anthony Brown and Mike White are a lot better players than that and (Wisconsin) is so big. I'm not worried about (Wisconsin's size) or (its shot) blocks, I 'm worried about making moves and playing basketball the way you are supposed to play and we weren't doing that at all. We'll give them credit for making us do that. The last three or four games we've been doing that to other teams, playing that way against other teams too that weren't quite as big. It was a little of them and a little of us. (Wisconsin) shot the ball extremely well, got a lot of balance from a lot of people and when you shoot that well and get to the free-throw line that much it's pretty hard.'
On Steffan Johnson's play 'Steffan came off the bench last year as a freshman and did a great job. If he played good, he played. If he didn't I put my seniors back in there. This year he has had to stay out there a lot longer. He's had some great moments, but he hasn't had consistency. The best stat he had, he had no turnovers tonight. Wisconsin doesn't really get out and extend so they don 't put a lot of pressure on you but his decision making was a lot better. He 's quick. The last two games he hasn't shot the three very well and he 's been shooting the three very well. He just needs to keep on learning and keep on getting better. He's in a situation where he needs more help. With Anthony Brown, (Anthony) Esparza and all those guys, they can help him a lot more than they are helping him right now. But he did a nice job tonight.'
