Wisconsin basketball finally earned its first Big Ten victory of the 2024-25 season after the Badgers defeated the Iowa Hawkeyes in Madison on Friday, 116-85. It was also the Badgers’ third straight victory.
Wisconsin shot the ball incredibly well in this game, with the Badgers making 64.5 percent of their field goal attempts. They were especially deadly from beyond the arc, hitting 21 of 31 attempts from deep. In the words of Wisconsin senior guard Kamari McGee, the Badgers simply took advantage of Iowa State’s porous defense.
“When we realized that they came here to outplay us and – they didn’t really care much about playing defense – we took advantage of it because we knew what we liked,” McGee told reporters after the game (at News 3 Now/Channel 3000’s Andrew Bandstra).
“We didn’t know we would get such great shots tonight, but we know we trust our teammates. We trust the players, so we know we can shoot in bursts. We just knew they didn’t want to play defense and all we had to do was play a little better defense than them and the game would be ours.
Wisconsin basketball punishes Iowa’s flawed defense
McGee scored 12 points on a fantastic 4-of-5 shooting from three-point range. Meanwhile, John Blackwell led Wisconsin with 32 points, hitting 11 of 18 shots, including six three-pointers.
The Hawkeyes’ defense isn’t Iowa’s strongest point this season. Fran McCaffery’s team ranks just 126th in the nation in adjusted defensive efficiency and just 17th in that area in the Big Ten, per KenPom.
As for the Badgers, their overall record improved to 11-3 and 1-2 in the conference standings. Next Monday they will face Rutgers Scarlet Knights away.
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