Badgers Take Down the Phoenix
December 15, 2007 | Men's Basketball
The Wisconsin men's basketball team finished off its week of play against three in-state rivals beating Green Bay 70-52 Saturday night at the Kohl Center. Wisconsin improves to 8-2 on the season, while Green Bay drops to 6-4.
Check out the Wisconsin-Green Bay postid=439"> --> Gameday Blog as well as mid=1574"> --> highlights , courtesy of the Big Ten Network. You can also view Wisconsin's mid=1573"> --> post-game press conference .
Joe Krabbenhoft led all scorers with 12 points and recorded his second double-double of the season grabbing ten rebounds for the third time this year. Krabbenhoft, who grabbed six of his rebounds on the offensive glass, shot 50 percent from the floor, hit 4-of-5 free throws and dished out four assists.
The Badgers dominated the paint, outscoring Green Bay 34-8 and scored 26 points on second-chance opportunities. Leading the way down low were Kevin Gullikson and Greg Stiemsma who were a combined 7-of-7 from the field for 16 points and five rebounds.
Gullikson tallied a season-high nine points as he recorded 20 minutes after entering the contest only playing 6.3 minutes per game.
Marcus Landry pitched in some good minutes and scored 11 points, his second-straight game in double figures. Wisconsin's offense was well-spread Saturday night as the eight different Badgers to score all tallied at least seven points. Jason Bohannon chipped in nine, Brian Butch had eight, while Stiemsma, Trevon Hughes and Michael Flowers all had seven.
The Phoenix were led by junior Cordero Barkley who recorded a season-high 11 points and grabbed a career-high eight rebounds. Green Bay's leading scorer entering the game, Mike Schachtner, was held to only eight points on 2-of-13 shooting.
The Badger defense showed why they lead the Big Ten in scoring defense as they held Green Bay to only 33 percent shooting and forced 20 turnovers. On the flip side, the Badgers shot 50 percent from the floor even while only hitting 3-of-13 three-pointers.
The Badgers are off until Saturday, Dec. 22, as they focus on finals week and prepare to host Valparaiso at 7:30 p.m. CT at the Kohl Center.
Wisconsin Head Coach Bo Ryan
Post-Game Quotes
On Joe Krabbenhoft's performance: 'I think that's pretty much the way Joe plays. He's always active. Because of how hard he plays and how revved up he is, he does a lot of great things. But that also gets him to rush things at time. He's working at it. I 'd rather have that energy and have to turn it down, rather than have guys that aren't involved. He is committed.'
On the big run in the first half: 'It isn't what you're doing differently, it's maybe what they didn 't cover and we found. It was one of those games that went in spurts. And that was the biggest spurt, it was that run that we made right there. But Greg Stiemsma really came in and picked us up in that one stretch; Kevin Gullikson in another, and Jason Bohannon. The guys off the bench really came in and did some nice things for us.'
On rebounding: 'Joe especially was working it. There were a lot of shots that were going all over the place. They had a lot of offensive rebounds too. I saw more deflections and more balls that weren't handled cleanly because of the way they came off the rim and the way they were tipped. I think if you go back and look at that game, you'd have to go way back to find another game where as many balls came off the rim in misses and weren't cleanly rebounded on the first touch. What's that mean' You have to stay active. You have to stay there and rebound. You have to get bodies on people. We're not a bashful rebounding team, but we could do better than that.'
Green Bay Head Coach Tod Kowalczyk
Post-Game Quotes
Opening Statements: 'I think clearly the story of the game is, we got caught on 15 for what seemed like forever. I don 't know how long of a draught that was but I thought we really had a great start and played with a lot of intensity and grit and played the way that we wanted to play, which was to give up in transition a little bit. During that eight, ten, 11 minute stretch for when we got caught on 15, I thought that the pace of the game got to Wisconsin 's pace, where they want to play in a slower, half-court style. Let's be honest, slower half-court style, they're bigger and better than we are. That style was really the story line of the game, was during that stretch where we had a hard time scoring.'
On Green Bay's 15-9 advantage in the first half: 'I think that more than anything that gave our guys some confidence to play. We made some shots, we got some things in transition, we got a couple big stops. We let them offensive rebound and get some easy points on us and then we had a hard time scoring, that really was the difference.'
On Wisconsin's offensive rebounding: 'There obviously a lot bigger and have a guy, who in my opinion is their best player in Joe Krabbenhoft. I thought he just dominated the glass at certain times, I think he had to have at least 10 rebounds or more, but it seemed like he kept getting offensive rebounds on us. I gave our players three key things that I really felt before the game if we could accomplish two of the three, we'd win the game and rebounding was the first one, to at least come out of the game even with them and we obviously weren't close to that.'
