MADISON, Wis. (AP)—The Wisconsin Badgers aren’t fretting over their misfiring offense because they’re covering it up so well.
“We’re not concerned. They’ll fall eventually,” Devin Harris said after leading the cold-shooting No. 15 Badgers past Rutgers 55-43 Saturday night. “As long as we play good defense, as you can see, we’re still getting wins.”
Harris scored 18 points and epitomized the Badgers’ night by missing all five of his 3-pointers but going 8-of-9 from the line.
The Badgers (3-0) won their 15th straight home game despite making just 3-of-20 shots from beyond the arc. They made 18 of 22 free throws.
They also forced Rutgers into 23 turnovers.
“They’re going to compete in the Big Ten because of the way they play defense,” Scarlet Knights coach Gary Waters said. “They’re going to have to have some guys step up and hit some shots in order to go deep in the Big Ten, but they compete and they defend pretty hard.”
Early foul trouble forced Waters to abandon his pressing defense and incorporate a zone, which he rarely uses but which gave the Badgers fits.
“We just had too many guys in foul trouble,” Waters said. “We had watched film. We knew they had struggled a little bit. But the problem with all that is if you don’t do anything at the offensive end, it’s only going to hurt you. That’s what happened to us.”
The Badgers have made just 38 percent of their shots so far, but just like last year, they’re making more free throws than their opponents are attempting.
That’s why Badgers coach Bo Ryan isn’t worried just yet, either.
“If you’re not getting to the free throw line and you’re not hitting (shots), then it becomes real obvious that could be a problem,” Ryan said.
It was for Rutgers.
The Scarlet Knights’ hopes of an upset were undone by their 4-of-12 showing at the foul line, including 2-of-8 by Herve Lamizana, who led Rutgers with 15 points.
“Me missing a whole lot of free throws did not help the team,” Lamizana said. “I kind of put this one on me.”
Actually, Lamizana got very little help from his teammates.
Leading scorer Ricky Shields, who was averaging 18.5 points in Rutgers’ first two games, shot 1-of-10 from the floor and finished with three points. And nobody picked up the slack besides Lamizana.
Rutgers (2-1) never led after Ray Nixon’s dunk midway through the first half gave Wisconsin its first lead, but the Scarlet Knights hung around to make a game of it until the waning minutes.
Lamizana’s basket with five minutes left pulled Rutgers to 44-37, but he missed the bonus and made one of two free throws at 4:17 to make it 44-38. Harris then sank four straight free throws and the Badgers’ lead never sank below double digits in the final three minutes.
Harris ended the first half and began the second with a steal and dunk that energized the Kohl Center crowd. In the first half, he tied up Juel Wiggan at midcourt and in the second half he wrested the ball from Marquis Webb to spark a 9-0 run for a 30-19 lead.
The Scarlet Knights trailed just 21-19 at halftime despite an eight-minute stretch in which they went scoreless and committed nine turnovers.