By Justin Parmer
Medill Reports
Despite being down by double digits at multiple points throughout Friday’s Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals, Wisconsin put its trust in its veteran guards, rallying to defeat Illinois 91-87 in overtime.
For the first time since 1968 the Badgers had two players score 30 or more points, with graduate senior Nick Boyd leading the way with 38 points and John Blackwell adding 31 to follow up his 34-point game against Washington on Thursday.
“You ride the hot hand, you ride the game,” Wisconsin coach Greg Gard said. “The game is a guard’s game, especially this time of year. To be able to have two really, really good ones like we do, I’d be an idiot not to put the ball in their hands.
Both performances were history-making in their own right. Boyd broke Blackwell’s one-day program record for the most points scored in a Big Ten Tournament game with his career high. Boyd scored 29 of his 38 points after halftime.
While Blackwell may no longer hold the single-game program record, the junior broke the program career Big Ten tournament scoring record, passing Ethan Happ’s 121 points. Heading into Saturday’s semifinals, Blackwell sat at 144 career points in the Big Ten Tournament.
“We just found cracks, tried to get there, finish off two feet, and play poised in there,” Blackwell said.
The Wisconsin victory didn’t come easy – at two separate points of the game, the Badgers found themselves down by 15 points, including a near seven-minute run when the Illini outscored them 23-3. With 11:34 left in the second half, Wisconsin found itself in a similar predicament, down 60-45. However within the span of seven and a half minutes, the Badgers went on a 25-7 run of their own, 21 of the points coming from Boyd and Blackwell.
“The game is about runs,” Blackwell said. “They’re going to have their runs and we’re going to have our runs. As long as we weather the storm, that was their punch, and we just keep punching back.”
The biggest disparity came at the free-throw line, where Wisconsin had twice as many attempts as Illinois (30-15), leading to a 16-point advantage.
“When you parade somebody to the line and have a discrepancy like that, you’re not going to win, ” Illinois coach Brad Underwood said.
This was the fourth consecutive overtime loss for the Illini this season, and their second at the hands of the Badgers. The loss in the quarterfinals also marks the Illini’s second loss this season at the United Center, a building set to host the Midwest region’s Sweet 16 and Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament.
“We lost a game to Alabama here when we didn’t make free throws either,” Underwood said. “For a team that’s top 10 in the country in free throw rate, that’s frustrating.”
Illinois was led by true freshman duo Keaton Wagler and David Mirkovic, both scoring 19 points on the day. Andrej Stojakovic scored 17 points, the only other Illini player with double digit figures.
“There’s nothing we (can’t) take away from this game and not apply and try to fix the mistakes that we made,” Stojakovic said. “All we can do is move on and apply the lessons from this game and move forward.”
Illinois finished its NCAA Tournament resume with a 24-8 record, 3-7 against current Associated Press rankings Top 25 opponents. Illinois is projected to be a top-four seed, according to all bracketologists tracked by BracketMatrix, but the quarterfinal might drop the Illini by a seed.
Wisconsin improved to 24-9 on the year with its fourth win against current top-10 opponents, but the Badgers lost to tournament No. 1 seed Michigan in the seminfinals Saturday, 68-65. In their previous meeting back in January, the Badgers upset the Wolverines, 91-88.
“You talk about rest? We’ll play X amount of games, and you’ve got to come out fighting,” Boyd said Friday. “If you’re not excited and ready to go for a game like tomorrow, don’t even lace ’em up.”
Justin Parmer is a sports media specialization graduate student at Medill.