Wisconsin-Ohio State thoughts

Show of hands: Who, back in November, looked at this Badger team and thought they'd be 7-1 on the road in Big Ten play with only a game at Northwestern to go away from the Kohl Center? Not me, that's for sure.

Another great road win for Wisconsin - not a perfect effort by any means, but making enough winning plays on both ends to come out on top.

-The Badgers' laissez faire approach to offense in the first half was appalling. the passing was careless. We looked unprepared for their defense. Once breaking their pressure, we didn't attack, but instead waited for more pressure to come. Pop in particular looked like he was sleepwalking out there. Thank goodness Flowers kept us in it.

It was a miracle we were tied at halftime. Obviously we were much better in the second half, with only two turnovers, although one of those did come right after a timeout to set up an inbounds play.

-Because CBS chose to stay with the Big East free throw shooting contest in South Bend (more on that later), we didn't see Butch's second foul, which LePay said was a pretty big flop by Jon Diebler. LePay doesn't complain about refs often, so it must have been pretty bad.

-Congrats to Brian for going over 1,000 career points. Some people might say he hasn't lived up to his billing as a McDonald's All-American. I'm not one of them, and this milestone is one reason why. I'll devote a longer post to the subject at a later date.

-The lineup we had out there for much of the first half was a catch-22: it needed to be small to deal with Ohio State's pressure (and Butch's foul trouble), but Koufos and Hunter ate us up on the boards. That lineup did better in the second half, but having Butch back in there was important.

-Billy Packer, who called a good game, kept harping on our inability to guard the pick and roll with Butler. He was right - I can't remember us having that much trouble defending that. Butler's inability to exploit that late was a big reason they lost.

-Clark Kellogg shows up with Packer and Verne Lundquist and says he's only in attendance as a proud alumnus today. Today? He is the most ridiculously on-air biased alumnus in sports broadcasting today, save for Stuart Scott. He was OK today, though.

-Kosta Koufos looks just like Arvid from Head of the Class. Take of Arvid's glasses, and give Koufos a pocket protector and an '80s haircut, and they could be brothers.

-The key play of the game was Flowers' steal and rim-hugging layup to tie the game at 49. Our seniors keep making big plays, which is what seniors should do.

-Ohio State obviously mises Greg Oden and Mike Conley, but you know who I think they miss most in games like today's? Ron Lewis. He was overshadowed last year by the freshmen, but he made a lot of big shots that either stopped their opponent's momentum or jump-started his team.

-Really didn't like how passive we got on offense after going up seven late.

-Remember early this season when we were all concerned about J-Bo's ability to get off his shot? Me neither.

-We recruited Evan Turner pretty hard, and he went to Columbus, so we took the less-heralded Tim Jarmusz. Today, TJ made his only field goal attempt and had three points, two rebounds, and an assist in 12 minutes. Turner was 2-for-7 for four points, two rebounds, two assists, and two turnovers in 31 minutes. As Packer repeatedly harped on, Turner did not use his size and athletic advantage on J-Bo, and was largely a spectator in extended minutes. This is why we win under Bo - our guys have less stars coming out of high school but are skilled and fit the system.

-We control our own destiny for grabbing at least a share of the Big Ten title, and 30 wins are within the grasp of this team as well. Not bad for a team projected to finish fourth or fifth in the conference.

-Missing the first six minutes of the game because of the excruciating end to Notre Dame-Syracuse was like enduring a root canal that takes four times longer than scheduled. Local CBS affiliates should have had the option of leaving that game in favor of the UW-OSU game. The Big East is a ridiculously large conference with something like 39 teams spread out in 27 states - let them show their games on local TV networks like the WB or UPN or whatever they are now, so their niche audiences should be confined to niche channels. Nobody in Wisconsin cares about Big East basketball outside of a three-block area in Milwaukee.