Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The Double Whammie!

The state of Minnesota got the double whammie last night, as WI proved to be the superior basketball state with wins by the Bucks over the Timberwolves and the Badgers over the Goophers. What a glorious night indeed!

Bucky, Bucky, Buuuuucky!
The Badgers defeated the Goophs on the Goophs own home floor last night 64-62 to improve to 13-2 and 3-0 in the Big Ten. The Badgers held the Goophs to making only 3 shots in the first half. That's right people, they made 3 friggin' shots. The defense that the Badgers can bring is simply phenominal (64.4 pts/game) and given that they average scoring 76.7 pts/game, they can do it on both ends. This team could have folded after giving up a huge lead on the road, but held together and won. This team is possibly better than last year's squad that made it to the Elite 8. But please, Mr. Tucker, work on that FT shooting would you? Shaq is even making fun of your ineptitude. The Border Battle is now 160-120 in favor of the Badgers over the Goophs.

The Bucks
Now, the Bucks have not played very well at home having a 9-7 record, oops, I mean 10-7 now that they beat the Wolves (sorry, cheap shot). The Bucks had to sit 6th Man of the Year, Mo Williams with plantar fascitis so they were down one of their big guns for this game. The Bucks did a great job in containing KG so that he could not get into the flow of offense for the Wolves. The bench contributed 34 points led by the immortal Toni Kukoc with 14. To me, this was the key to the game as the bench has been fairly silent during the 3 game slide. The Bucks broke out of their shooting slump against one of the better defensive teams in the league by hitting 51.3% of their shots. The Bucks defense was its usual self by allowing 52.9% shooting by the Wolves, but were able to hold on. One of the better home performances from the Bucks to improve their record to 18-14 and 3rd place in the Central Division. They now have 5 of their next 6 on the road starting with being at Indiana tonight. Ugh.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love the Bucky chant, I have to hear that live.
-R

Curt said...

I was amazed at how after the Gophers took a brief 59-58 lead, they did not get a good look at the basket for the rest of game. Wisconsin just clamped down, and the Gophers were unable to generate any open shots.

Curt in Grand Forks

Anonymous said...

I also don't have any work today so far, I begged for some so I may be able to do a few tonight if my nemesis Anita doesn't do them all.
Rach