Big W for UW

The Wisconsin Badger #13 hosted the Indiana Hoosiers #11 at the Kohl Center last night. Indiana brought two of the league's top-three scorers in freshman guard Eric Gordon and senior forward D.J. White. White scored a game-high 22 points and Gordon added 16, and it was the 13th-ranked Badgers who walked away with a 62-49 victory over the No. 11 Hoosiers in a game watched by an energized sellout crowd of 17,190 and broadcasted in primetime on ESPN.

"I thought our guys did a great job," Badger coach Bo Ryan said. "D.J. is going to get some buckets. They didn't shoot it well, we didn't shoot it well. But I really liked our defensive effort of trying to get them to take shots that they weren't quite as comfortable with.

"But I'll bet when I look at the tape that they had guys wide open a few times because we helped and then didn't recover properly and they just didn't knock the shots down. I've got to be real honest. I have a feeling when I do the evaluation I'd like to see us cover the shooters maybe a little better, but if the ball's not going in, people forget. But coaches don't forget."

"In critical situations, I thought Wisconsin was better than us," Hoosiers coach Kelvin Sampson said.

And there was no Badger better down the stretch than the 6-7 Krabbenhoft, who grabbed four offensive rebounds over the game's final five minutes — all of them resulting in second-chance points.

The first resulted in a Marcus Landry free throw with 4:44 to play that made it 51-43. Krabbenhoft tipped in a missed 3-pointer by sophomore guard Jason Bohannon with 3:52 to go that provided the Badgers with a 53-45 lead.

His rebound of a missed jumper by Trevon Hughes wound up resulting in a pair of free throws by Hughes with 2:43 to play that pushed the UW lead to 55-45.

And the last of his six offensive rebounds resulted in another pair of free throws by Hughes with 1:21 that made it 59-47.

"In life there are just some people that come and give a great effort every day. And that's Joe," Ryan said. "Sometimes the results maybe can look varied, but the energy will never vary. He just plays hard and plays smart and he's a big reason why we can (win) a game like this."

Krabbenhoft, however, made a point afterward to mention another big reason UW came away with a victory.

"Defensively is where we won the game tonight," Krabbenhoft said. "That's what we hang our hat on."