“I sensed trouble brewing Friday night about two minutes after the loss to Western IL”, Patsos said.
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Still, two games into the season, a program that has built its reputation on defense under coach Bo Ryan has allowed back-to-back nonconference opponents to come into the Kohl Center and eclipse the 60-point mark.
Bronson Koenig led Wisconsin (1-1) with 23 points.
The Badgers kept in rolling coming out of the locker room, scoring the first ten points of the second half which essentially put the game out of reach. Wisky better get it together quite quickly. But the barrage of fouls Sunday – 23 on each team – allowed the Saints to shoot 18 of 27 from the foul line. “. … Our guys are going to learn”.
Ryan Oliver put Siena up 14-13 with the Saints’ only three-pointer (1-8) of the first half, and Lavon Long pushed the lead to three with a hard drive on the next possession.
The Badgers looked like a different team offensively after hitting less than 36 percent of their shots Friday night. Junior forward Vitto Brown also had a career-high in points, with 16.
The half came to an exciting end when Koenig failed to hit a last-second three and Zak Showalter flew through the air, met the ball at the rim and flushed it down as time expired to give Wisconsin its biggest lead of the half.
The Saints led Wisconsin 16-13 early but shot only 39.3 percent from the field and 3 of 16 from 3-point range. The Badgers shot lights out from the field throughout the game, especially in the second half when they made 68 percent of their shots to finish the game shooting 58.5 percent. The Saints opened with a 92-74 loss at defending national champion Duke on Friday and become the first team to take on the previous NCAA Tournament finalists to start a season since the field expanded to 64 in 1985. The Siena Saints really had no shot against Duke, but they did shoot a solid percentage and scored 47 points in the second half.
“You look up tempo in the dictionary, you see Bo Ryan’s picture and you start playing right into their hands”, Patsos said. “Obviously that was pretty embarrassing, but we know what we’ve got and what we’re capable of and I think we responded pretty well”. The Badgers are 22-9-1 ATS in their last 32 non-conference games and 2-5-1 ATS in their last 8 home games vs. a team with a losing road record.
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Siena: Plays Radford on Friday night in Smithfield, Rhode Island.
