BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer
MADISON, Wis. – Leave it to
Steven Crowl, a Minnesotan, where hockey is king, to come up with the "save" of the game in the final 72 seconds Tuesday night at Indiana. Leave everything else offensively to Wisconsin's gifted sophomore guard
Johnny Davis. Let's not mince words.
Let Johnny eat.
"Late in the game," Crowl said, "we go to him, and he comes through for us."
Trailing 66-61 at the under-4-minute timeout (with 3:52 remaining), Davis took charge. He scored 13 consecutive points on a variety of deft shots and play-through-contact drives resulting in baskets or free throws – or both – to rally the Badgers to a hard-earned 74-69 victory at Assembly Hall.
"I knew he was hot before the last 13 points," UW coach
Greg Gard said of Davis, who finished with 30. "I could tell just in his body language that he was feeling good tonight … some of it was scripted down the stretch and there were some things that obviously he makes terrific plays on his own.
"He can create something out of nothing at times.
"But maybe you could say it was good coaching – putting the ball in his hands," Gard said with a smile.
Indiana coach Mike Woodson knows something about making baskets. Especially contested ones. After all, he scored over 2,000 points with the Hoosiers and nearly 11,000 during his NBA career. So, when Woodson was asked about the defensive coverage on Davis, he didn't mince words, either.
"I mean, everybody struggled with Johnny," said Woodson, who rotated three different defenders on Davis from Miller Kopp to Trey Galloway to Parker Stewart. "Everybody that guarded him struggled with him. He had a helluva game. He's just that type of player.
"It's hard to double him because a lot of times he's up on top (of the key) and he's making plays off the bounce. He kept beating our defense going the other way (from screens) … It didn't matter who we put on him … coming down the stretch couldn't nobody play him. He had a great game."
Davis was 10-of-14 from the stripe, the fourth time this season that he has shot 10 or more free throws in a game. The three previous times were also on the road. He was 9-of-12 at Purdue, 7-of-10 at Northwestern and 11-of-14 at Illinois. He's averaging 7.6 FTAs in 12 road/neutral games.
"When you're on the road and your shot is not falling, you've got to attack the hoop and get to the free throw line," rationalized Davis whose 10 made field goals (10-of-15) were his most since facing Iowa (Jan 6). Over the last three games, Davis is shooting 64 percent (23-of-36 FGs).
"I felt we just ran better offense tonight," he said of the Badgers who shot 54 percent in the second half and most impressively went 22-of-29 from the free throw line (
Brad Davison was 10-of-10). "We did a better job of getting the ball to me in a position where I could make a play."
One of the key plays, a hustle play, was turned in by Crowl, the 7-foot Wisconsin center. With Indiana clinging to a 69-68 lead, he tracked down a loose ball on the baseline and flicked it back to Davison before stepping out of bounds. Upon video review, it was ruled in favor of the Badgers.
"Huge save," gushed UW assistant coach
Sharif Chambliss.
Huge because on the subsequent possession, Davis turned down a Crowl screen and drove left around Kopp and into Trayce Jackson-Davis who was protecting the rim. Davis scored with his left hand and drew the foul. Completing the 3-point play, the Badgers took a 71-69 lead they didn't relinquish.
There was another sequence midway through the second half where Davis slashed off the left wing past Race Thompson. Upon confronting Jackson-Davis, he switched the ball to his right hand and hung in the air through contact to make a high degree of difficulty shot look easy, almost routine.
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"Honestly, I don't know how it went in," said Davis, acknowledging Jackson-Davis' prowess as a rim-protector and the leading shot blocker in the Big Ten. "He's a good defender. And he's really big, too. With a guy like that, you have to make sure you get into his body before he has a chance to go up."
Jackson-Davis also ended up with 30 points (10-of-13 FG, 10-of-14 FT). But after he split from the line with 2:31 left, he didn't take another shot. Indiana's guards (Galloway, Stewart and Xavier Johnson) missed five straight field goal attempts, four from beyond the arc, to close out the game.
"I thought Steven really dug in," UW coach
Joe Krabbenhoft said of Crowl's low post defense during crunch time. "When it mattered the most, he was able to keep the ball out of the post. I thought the ball pressure late with Chucky (Hepburn) caused some mistiming for Indiana."
Added Chambliss on the defensive intensity, "I thought we did a good job of communicating. We had a game plan on what we were doing the last two minutes. We were switching and Chucky did a great job of jumping out there aggressively. Brad and Johnny did a good job of talking."
Hepburn, the true freshman point guard, played a season-high 37 minutes and 29 seconds and had 8 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists and zero turnovers. He was 4-of-5 inside the arc. Moreover, he set the tone for that perimeter defense with his physical presence and pressure that he puts on the ball.
"This group is a tough-minded group," Gard said. "They're very connected. They'll battle in the fight. They kept coming to the huddle the last seven, eight, nine minutes and said, 'We're not going to lose.' They have that mindset to them. And where there's a will, there's a way."
Epitomizing that spirit is Davison. The last four games, he had made just 4-of-28 (.142) shots from the 3-point line. But he refused to let that get into his head. Instead, he remained steadfast in his belief and preparation. To go along with those 10 free throws, Davison hit three 3's and had 21 points.
Davison had extra motivation playing in front of his fiancé Tyra Buss, a UW-Milwaukee assistant coach and the Hoosiers all-time leading scorer with 2,364 points (Davison has 1,709 at Wisconsin). Buss was first-team All-Big Ten three straight years. As a senior (2017-18), she averaged 20.6 points.
Led by Davis and Davison, the Badgers showed their resiliency after Indiana went on a 10-0 run and took a 50-43 lead at 14:01 of the second half. In fighting back, Crowl had a couple of timely baskets: a dunk and a 3-pointer. He had been only 6-of-28 (.214) from the arc on the road.
"We got our mojo back tonight," Crowl said. "Especially late in the game."
That's the team that the Badgers have been most of the season. Rutgers was an exception.
"It was a complete team effort," Krabbenhoft said. "I thought Coach Gard was incredible. He has been all year. He has been their rock. You come out of the 4-minute media timeout, and they're shooting free throws to go up by 6. But our guys knew what the plan was on both ends of the floor."
Let Johnny eat. Not a bad plan.
"That's what National Players of the Year do…" Krabbenhoft pointed out.
The Badgers are now 7-2 in true road games, 10-2 including neutral sites. Let Johnny explain.
"I think it's just because of how tough we are," said Davis who's averaging 23.6 points in venues not named the Kohl Center. "We're just not going to let a team punk us on their home floor. Besides, that feeling of coming into somebody else's arena and stealing that 'W' from them feels great."
Let Johnny savor.
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