In this edition of Flashback Friday, the Wisconsin Badgers had a chance to win the outright Big Ten championship with a win in Evanston against the Northwestern Wildcats, who were 1-16 in conference. Nobody really gave Wisconsin much of a chance to do much in the 2007-08 season after losing arguably its two best players in Alando Tucker and Kammron Taylor to graduation. The Badgers struggled early in the season, getting blown out at Duke and suffering a rare home loss to in-state rival Marquette, which left Wisconsin fans scratching their heads. The season turned around with a trip to Austin, Texas. After leading scorer, point guard Trevon Hughes was injured the day before the game, Wisconsin rebounded with an improbable win to set the table for a great ride in the Big Ten season. Wisconsin came into the Northwestern game 15-2 in conference and was looking to complete its incredible season with an outright conference title.
Wisconsin already clinched at least a share of the conference crown with a 77-41 win over Penn State March 5. Even though Northwestern struggled, it had some talent on the team, led by Kevin Coble.
Brian Butch was having none of that, though, as he scored 20 points and grabbed 14 rebounds, both were game highs and Wisconsin won 65-52.
Northwestern made it interesting throughout much of the first half, as a layup by Michael Thompson cut the Wisconsin lead to 21-20 with five and a half minutes to play in the first half. After that, though, Wisconsin went to work. Butch and Jason Bohannon each scored four points and Northwestern was held scoreless for the rest of the half after the Thompson layup and Wisconsin went into halftime ahead 29-20.
After two free throws by Northwestern's Nikola Baran cut it to 37-29, Marcus Landry went on a personal 8-0 run, including two 3-pointers, to put the game away. Northwestern would get no closer than 11 points the rest of the way and Wisconsin won to clinch its first outright conference title since 2003.
Along with Butch's 20 and 14, two other Badgers scored in double figures, Landry with 12 and Jason Bohannon with 15. Joe Krabbenhoft once again stuffed the stat sheet for the Badgers, scoring nine points and added six rebounds, four assists and a steal.
The Badgers finished the regular season 26-4 and 16-2 in Big Ten play, with the only two losses coming to the Purdue Boilermakers. Wisconsin won all three games in the Big Ten Tournament to win it and was a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Badgers won their first two games by double digits against Josh Akognon and Cal State Fullerton and then Michael Beasley and Kansas State. But then they ran into a buzzsaw named Stephen Curry in the Sweet 16 and the Badgers fell to Curry's Davidson Wildcats 73-56 to end the season 31-5.
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