The Wisconsin Badgers fell short in a 74-63 loss to the TCU Horned Frogs on Friday, disappointing in the championship game to fall to 5-2 on the year.
Wisconsin came into the game with the opportunity to win its fourth multi-team tournament, but struggled early and couldn’t make up enough ground as the game went on.
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It was a messy game marred by turnovers and mistakes, as Wisconsin just didn’t seem like itself in the loss to TCU.
Unlike in last Friday’s loss to the BYU Cougars, the Badgers were actually favored against TCU, but they’ll return to Madison with a lot to figure out before matchups with Northwestern and Marquette next week.
Here are three quick takeaways from Wisconsin’s 74-63 loss to TCU.
Slow start
Coming into the game, we mentioned in our pregame thread that Wisconsin needed to start fast on Friday. This season, when holding a lead and starting hot. But, things have been shakier early when they get off to a slow start.
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Wisconsin fell behind 12-4 in the first half, and it felt like they were playing catch-up the rest of the period. Whenever the Badgers would claw back, it would be from a fairly decent deficit, and TCU head coach Jamie Dixon would call well-timed timeouts.
The Badgers were trailing by at least nine from the 15:00 mark of the first half to the 1:50 mark. They did have a nice 9-0 run to end the half, cutting the lead to 41-37.
But, that goodwill was immediately taken away as TCU opened the second half on an 8-0 run, taking a 10-point lead. Minutes later, they went on a 10-2 run, and suddenly the lead was up to 19. What started as a four-point lead at halftime ballooned up to 19 in the first 8:29 of the second half.
The Badgers showed some grit at the end of the game, but it was too little too late. After the BYU loss, head coach Greg Gard said he didn’t like how the team responded in the game. That was exactly the case here against TCU as Wisconsin got carried away on the Horned Frogs’ runs, making mistake after mistake and playing themselves out of the game against a tough adversary.
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Turnovers
Wisconsin had a very clean game against Providence, winning both the rebounding and turnover battles. But, it was an absolute must to play that way against TCU, who forced 19 turnovers in the upset over Florida on Thursday.
Well, they didn’t, and they lost. Wisconsin had a season-high 17 turnovers in the loss. More importantly, TCU had 21 points off turnovers, in comparison to only six for the Badgers.
One day after a career-high 36 points, seven assists, and seven rebounds with zero turnovers, point guard Nick Boyd gave the ball away five times on Friday. The starters combined for 13 turnovers, with John Blackwell and Austin Rapp also having three each.
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It was just a sloppy day for Wisconsin as it sped itself up sometimes and didn’t play its style of basketball. TCU made them pay in a big way.
Awful shooting
Three-point shooting has been Wisconsin’s key in both wins and losses. They’ve been balanced when winning, shooting well on twos and threes, but their streakiness from deep has shown up in the two losses.
On Friday, the Badgers faced a good defensive team and struggled everywhere. They took 28 threes, hitting at only a 25 percent clip, as the starters were a combined 5/19.
But, they also really struggled with physicality and shots inside the paint, going only 32.5 percent on twos, 8/19 on layups, and scoring only 24 points in the paint.
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Wisconsin did get to the free-throw line 18 times, hitting 16 of them. But, that was the only positive offensively on the day.
The Badgers will have to figure out how to best attack good defenses because they can’t collapse as they did in the second half, where Wisconsin shot 7/29 from the field (24.1 percent) and 2/14 from three (14.1 percent).
Their ball movement has been good. But, it felt like another game where they were too three-ball reliant. That’s costly when they aren’t going down.
