NEW YORK — Around 15 minutes after the No. 5 University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team’s season collapsed — shocked early and without a chance to recover — in an upset loss to No. 12 James Madison on Friday at the Barclays Center, a few of Badgers leaders stood off to the side of the press room in disarray.
Senior Max Klesmit draped a towel over his head, junior Chucky Hepburn crossed his arms over his chest and senior Steven Crowl buried his arms within his jersey — the image of a season that ended too soon in a way that Wisconsin was still trying to grasp.
Wisconsin coach Greg Gard insisted on Thursday that his team, if it played well, could win the entire tournament. Hepburn wasn't satisfied with making the field, he wanted to take Wisconsin (22-14) on a deep March Madness run: A "killer mentality" he displayed from the moment Wisconsin was selected Sunday until Friday, when those menacing glares which projected hope amid Hepburn's elevated play were replaced by tears.
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Instead of all it had predicted, everything Wisconsin had built toward ended in the tournament's first round with a 72-61 loss. For a team that at the start of the season and right before the end of it, the shock was palpable.
"It burns because you put a lot into this," Gard said. "This wasn't just ... you weren't preparing for this just for four days after Selection Sunday. You've been working toward this since last June."
Wisconsin, riding the high of one of its best stretches of the season following a run to the Big Ten Tournament title game a week ago, couldn’t muster the offensive firepower to counter a huge early lead for James Madison (32-3). A Dukes team that ranked 40th in the country in defensive turnover percentage per KenPom (19.8%) forced the Badgers in a season-high 19.
"They were just the more aggressive team," Hepburn said.
Klesmit finished with a team-high 18 points, Crowl had his seventh double-double of the season with 10 points and 11 rebounds and Tyler Wahl’s career ended with five points on 1-of-5 shooting, seven rebounds and three assists.
This was an improved position for the Badgers, who missed the NCAA Tournament a season ago. But Wisconsin (22-14) enters the offseason after its second first-round exit in Gard’s six March Madness appearances with several questions as the worst of a team that was once ranked No. 6 in the Associated Press men’s college basketball rankings displayed in a historically bad February (six losses in eight games) reemerged at the worst moment possible.
The Badgers started just about as bad as they could have. After allowing an opening 3-pointer by James Madison guard Noah Freidel, an AJ Storr leaning jumper at the left elbow marked the only points Wisconsin would score before a Crowl jump hook with 14 minutes, 16 seconds remaining in the first half. At that point, Wisconsin already trailed 10-4. James Madison didn’t start off scorching hot, but a 7-0 run helped it break free of the Badgers. Then it went on a 9-1 run, and the Badgers trailed 18-5 before they even connected on three shots.
That third make came at 9:58 — a Crowl 3 — and then Crowl finished off a 5-0 run by himself, but even scoring 11 of the game’s 14 points over the next 2:55 of the game could only bring the Badgers within five. Wisconsin followed three straight makes from the field with nine straight misses over the final 7:03 to end the half, allowing another unanswered run of 12 straight points to the Dukes, mercifully getting four unanswered points at the line to go to halftime down 33-20. It turned the ball over 13 times, shot 26.1% from the field and 16.7% from the 3-point line, and trailed a James Madison team that connected on just 37.5% of its field goals. Its 20 points were the lowest total in a half this season.
"Playing with momentum is a really big deal in this tournament and at this time in March," Klesmit said. "You kind of saw how it played against us early in the first half."
The Badgers finally got some 3s to fall in the opening 3:56 of the second half, with Klesmit connecting on all three of Wisconsin’s makes from that distance. But that was coupled with an inability to get stops, only outscoring James Madison by two points over that stretch as the Dukes connected on four of their first eight attempts from the field to maintain a 42-31 lead after four minutes.
Even as Klesmit connected on another 3 to make it 45-36 — Wisconsin getting the deficit under 10 points for the third time in the first 6:43 of the half — two split trips at the free throw line were matched with two James Madison field goals to get the Badgers down double digits again, 49-37 with 12:14 to go. The cycle continued over and over.
Wisconsin went on a 9-3 run, but then James Madison went on an 11-3 run over 2:25 to take a 63-49 lead with 5:24 left. The Dukes scored six straight points at the free throw line as Wisconsin missed three shots in a row after a Klesmit 3. Hepburn connected on a step-back 3 with 4:44 left to cut the Badgers’ deficit back to nine points, but then James Madison answered with a 3 on the other end to regain control.
James Madison didn’t need much more at that point, and with the clock winding down under three minutes, a chant of “J-M-U” grew even louder. The image of seven Wisconsin misses in the final four minutes played over and over as the clock lessened its ability to make a comeback.
Down 70-59, Wisconsin fouled Freidel in transition to send the senior to the line with 1:05 left. The celebration had already started a few possessions earlier for the Dukes. Wisconsin’s season was over from the start Friday.
"I don't like comparing years because the players are different. The momentum through a season is different. Your season ebbs and flows differently," Gard said. "This one stinks because this group has put a lot into it and they had really high goals, and had played really well."
Here are three things that stood out.
Badgers cough it up early
It took some time, but after a floating jumper to open the Badgers’ scoring and a step-back 3-point miss, with 10:33 remaining in the first half, Storr finally got into a spot he’s been able to cause a bunch of damage throughout his first season with the Badgers: under the rim. Storr pump-faked but didn’t have the shot he wanted. Yet, before he had the opportunity to look for another attempt, the ball ended up on the ground, rolling away from the Badgers once again. James Madison kept active hands and took it away.
It was a familiar sight for Wisconsin in the first half. That was the Badgers’ ninth turnover in the first 9:27 of the game — more than the Badgers had in either of the last two games — which led to 15 of the Dukes’ first 19 points. Wisconsin was completely out of control in the first half, being undercut by James Madison seemingly every time it tried to hand the ball off and rarely firing a crisp entry pass. It even threw a few passes away out of bounds entirely. The Badgers had 13 turnovers leading to 20 Dukes points in the first half. Wisconsin had just six more the rest of the game, but the first-half flurry had sealed its fate.
"They just started building," Klesmit said, "and we didn't do well enough to handle it early."
Badgers shoot terribly in the first half
Wisconsin seemed like it had something going with 8:36 left in the first half. After some errant throws on early entry passes, the Badgers finally found Crowl for some easy scores. He hit a 3. Then he dunked the ball off a Hepburn steal. Wisconsin would need plenty more, already in an eight-point hole, but with the Dukes making just seven of their first 20 shots to that point, it looked like Wisconsin might shoot its way out of it — a Storr layup a little over a minute later marking four makes in five attempts.
But that shot was the last shot Wisconsin would make in the first half. It wasn’t just the turnovers. It’s likely they didn’t help, but the Badgers also shot brutally in the first half. It made 6 of 23 field goals and 1 of 6 3s, doing so at points by making their attempts harder than they needed to be. Also, by missing shots they have made with regularity over the last four games.
Whether it be John Blackwell’s layup that fell too short with 15:58 left, Hepburn’s scooping reverse after a jump stop in the lane with 11:29 left, Wahl’s miss on a reverse then miss on his own rebound with 5:51 left or Storr’s two misses in a row with 3:05 left, Wisconsin didn’t look coordinated when near or under the rim. The 3-pointers didn’t fall, either — not until the second half, when it was too late. And that made for a bad combination. Because James Madison just needed them to fall a little, and that’s what they did.
"When you have 13 turnovers and shoot 26% in the first half," Gard said, "you've really dug yourself a hole."
Max Klesmit nearly shoots the Badgers out of deficit
Whether Wisconsin would lose or win Friday seemed to rest in Klesmit’s hands. So, four 3s down, Klesmit raced to the left corner off an inbounds with 8:54 left in the game. Klesmit caught it and went up immediately, he hung in mid-air before he released a wild shot — the types of shots the Badgers had missed all throughout their first round game. But Klesmit was hot, so it fell. And suddenly, Wisconsin trailed by just six points, 52-46.
It was Klesmit’s fifth 3 of the second half, several coming on the right wing as a Wisconsin team starved for offense was carried by one player. Klesmit scored 15 of the Badgers’ first 24 points of the second half. But Wisconsin couldn’t get stops, and Klesmit’s makes to will the Badgers back never allowed them to get any closer than the six points on his fifth 3.
A critical moment came soon after that last 3, at 7:55, when Klesmit's hot streak seemed to take him to the rim for a score. He got the ball off the glass. He got the ball off the rim. It hung for a bit less than a second, but a ball that looked it could have fallen in either direction, fell to the right and off the rim. Inches was as close as the Badgers came to cutting the deficit to just four points, and they never came that close again.
"Obviously cutting it down to three or four would have helped us out big time," Klesmit said. "Got the crowd back into it ... Tip your hat to James Madison. They were the better team tonight."