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Many people were surprised when Wisconsin basketball came in at No. 11 overall — the third No. 3 seed — in the NCAA Tournament selection committee's top 16 reveal on Saturday morning, but the Badgers backed it up quickly. Wisconsin used a monster second half to get a big 94-84 road win against No. 7 Purdue and cement itself as one of the best teams in the country.
Wisconsin scored 58 points in the second half to run away with the victory, and they did a lot of that work by getting into the paint to create good looks on offense. After the game, Purdue head coach Matt Painter provided an incredible stat that the Boilermakers track during games that shows how dominant Wisconsin was at getting inside, via Dustin Schutte of Sports Illustrated.
“The stat that jumps out, which is just an unbelievable stat, is they're 20-for-22 from two,” Painter said. “At halftime, they were like … 4-for-21 in possessions. Now, you can get a couple of possessions within the same one. So, they were 4-for-21 when the ball didn't go in the paint. They were 12-of-13 in positive plays.
“So, if you go into the paint and you get fouled, that's a positive play, you're 1-for-1. You get in the paint and you spray out and you shoot it, that's another 1-for-1. If you get in the paint and you get fouled and it gets taken out, you got 1-for-1. You score off of that out-of-bounds play, that's another 1-for-1. That's how we kind of score it.”
Wisconsin's John Tonje was a massive part of why the Badgers were able to get into the paint so often down the stretch. The college basketball veteran finished the game with 32 points and six rebounds on a hyper-efficient 10-for-15 shooting. He got to the free throw line at will, hitting eight of his nine attempts at the charity stripe as he diced up the Purdue defense all afternoon.
Purdue's defense is a bit of a concern after this game, as they really struggled to stop dribble penetration and contain the drive against Wisconsin. However, that hasn't stopped the Boilermakers from being one of the top teams in the Big Ten this season and putting themselves in position for a protected seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Surely, Matt Painter and his staff will be focused on getting that issue fixed on the defensive end. However, this may be a bigger picture strength for this Wisconsin basketball team, who has troubled a lot of teams by getting inside and dominating that way. Any team that runs up against the Badgers in March will have that at the top of the scouting report.
