Wisconsin Badgers had a chance to play spoiler this week. They would welcome two ranked opponents to the Kohl Center with Michigan visiting on Sunday, and Purdue coming to town on Thursday night. Wisconsin is looking for some sort of moral victory at this juncture of the season with the Badgers being under .500 for the year. It looked like Michigan would not provide that sort of feeling early on. The Wolverines were red hot and jumped out to a 22-point halftime lead. Wisconsin would fight back, but they didn’t have enough to finish the comeback.

Happ continues to put up big stat lines
Even though Wisconsin is a low tier Big Ten program this season, Happ has a legitimate case to be a second or third team all-Big Ten player. He continues to be a catalyst for this team in the paint. Last year, there would be games where Happ disappears for halves or long stretches, but now, that doesn’t seem to be a thing. He finishes with 29 points and seven rebounds with six assists as well. This is a career high for Happ.

Wisconsin’s defense starts off slow and never recovers
As mentioned, Michigan got off to a hot start and they didn’t really look back. Wisconsin let the Wolverines shoot 65 percent from the field in that first period. That’s not going to win you many ball games. Too many times this season Wisconsin has come out with no energy on defense. Not sure if it’s a youth thing or they’re playing tight but it’s a theme of the season.

Brevin Pritzl shows something off the bench
If you heard my Daily Tap on Saturday, I posed some criticism to Steve Wojciechowski for not trying his second-best offensive player as part of the second unit. This is something Greg Gard did with Brevin Pritzl, and it’s working out well in the last two games. Pritzl scored 13 last game and 15 in this one making four threes versus Michigan. It seems like he provides some much needed scoring for that second unit. Imagine that….

Next up
Like we talked about it, this isn’t an easy week for Wisconsin as they play Purdue at home on Thursday. The season from hell has four games left. Even though it’s wacky, I’m sure Wisconsin is thankful the season ends a week early.