Koenig scores 14, dishes out 6
MINNEAPOLIS – La Crosse, Wis., native Bronson Koenig had 14 points and six assists, Ethan Happ added 12 points and 10 rebounds in leading Wisconsin over an undermanned Minnesota 62-49 on Wednesday night.
It was the 11th win by the Badgers in their last 12 games, and capped off a Big Ten record 15th Top-4 finish in conference.
Vitto Brown pitched in 12 points and six rebounds for Wisconsin (20-10, 12-5 Big Ten), which moved into a tie for second place with No. 2 Michigan State.
Stephon Sharp scored 16 points and Jordan Murphy added 15 for the Gophers (8-21, 2-15), who played without suspended guards Kevin Dorsey, Nate Mason and Dupree McBrayer for the second straight game.
Mason is the team’s leading scorer. The trio was punished for a sexually explicit video that appeared on Dorsey’s social media accounts.
Minnesota went 3 for 17 from 3-point range against a Wisconsin team that’s last in the league in 3-point defense.
Zak Showalter’s contested 3-pointer from the corner early in the second half put the Badgers up 47-28, but they seemed a little bored as the game wore on against their overmatched rival.
Khalil Iverson was so comfortable he tried to finish an unabated fast break with a windmill dunk, but the ball slipped out of his hand and went backward like a slingshot to the amusement of the crowd and everyone but coach Greg Gard, who immediately summoned Jordan Hill to sub for Iverson.
Iverson made up for it a little later with a double-pump slam from the baseline that brought a standing roar of approval from the Badgers bench and gave Wisconsin a 51-30 lead.
Murphy guided the Gophers closer down the stretch, but even after a whopping stretch of 8:57 without a field goal for the Badgers, the deficit for Minnesota was never smaller than 11 points.
Gard, the interim replacement for the recently retired Bo Ryan, his long-time boss, has coached his way into serious consideration for the job. Wisconsin has cruised past those ugly nonconference losses and returned to the familiar place among the Big Ten leaders, reaching the 12-win mark in the conference for the sixth straight season.
The Gophers headed into the final week of this miserable season with nine available players, only six of them on scholarship. Joey King had the pregame senior night ceremony to himself as the lone player left on the roster with expiring eligibility.
With Dorsey, Mason and McBrayer watching from the bench in white warmup shirts, the Gophers kept close during a mellow first 10-plus minutes of the game until Koenig and Brown warmed up a bit and the Badgers predictably pulled away. Nigel Hayes hit an off-balance catch-and-shoot 3-pointer from the top of the key with 3:22 left before halftime to give the Badgers a 38-18 lead.