Beyond the Box Score: Wisconsin 71, Penn State 66

(Photo courtesy Matthew O'Haren, USA Today)

That was about all we could really hope for.

It’s never easy in State College and yesterday was no different. The Badgers played well enough to get the win and are now two wins away from the two seed in the Big Ten Tournament.

Let’s take a look at the box score.

• Ben Brust played 39 minutes. This shows that when he’s hitting his shots, he’s a main cog of this team. He was 4-7 from three yesterday which is definitely good enough.
• Penn State outscored Wisconsin 50-18 in the paint. That’s an outrageous number, but it obviously didn’t come back to haunt the Badgers. The Nittany Lions were only 1-13 from three point, which helped alleviate the points in the paint.
• Wisconsin scored 17 points off 11 Penn State turnovers. That’s not a huge amount of turnovers, so the Badgers did a very nice job taking advantage of the few that occurred.
• Nigel Hayes hit five of his six free throws. Earlier in the year this was the weakest part of his game. He’s becoming more consistent, which is making him even more of a threat.

Next up in a home date against Purdue on Wednesday. It seems crazy to write, but it’s important not to look past the Boilermakers before the big game in Lincoln.