State Basketball Round-up: Marquette a 3, Wisconsin a 5 for upcoming Tourney

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Both Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin were selected for the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament yesterday.

Marquette was given a No. 3 seed for the second year in a row, and will play Number14 Davidson on Thursday afternoon at Lexington Kentucky in the East Regional. Wisconsin got the fifth-seed in the West, and will play No. 5 Mississippi late Friday morning in Kansas City. The Badgers are making their 15th straight trip to the Big Dance.

Marquette is 23-8 after losing their only Big East tournament game to Notre Dame last week. They’ll play a Davidson team that’s 26-7 after winning the Southern Conference. One of Davidson’s losses was at UW-Milwaukee in mid-November, a five-point defeat in which the Wildcats shot 36-percent. They’re not the same team they were in 2008, when Stephen Curry burned the Badgers for 33 points in the Sweet-16 round. But coach Bob McKillop is highly-regarded, and his Wildcats are comfortable in a variety of tempos.

The Badgers will play an Ole Miss team that won the SEC Tournament yesterday by three points over Florida. That was just before Wisconsin fell to Ohio State in the Big Ten final. Bo Ryan’s Badgers enter the national tournament at 23-and-11. The Rebels are 26-8 after a big second-half yesterday in which Marshall Henderson scored 18-of-his-21 points. Ole Miss is 1-1 against Florida this season, and the Badgers lost to them by 18 in mid-November. In Ryan’s words, “Ole Miss has shown they can do quite a few things.”

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Wisconsin failed to score a basket in the final seven minutes yesterday, when Ohio State topped the Badgers 50-43 in the Big Ten men’s tournament final in Chicago. The Buckeyes won their league-best fifth tournament crown. The Badgers failed to give their seniors a championship, having last won the tourney in 2008. 22nd-ranked Wisconsin shot 40-percent in the first half, when they took a one-point lead to the locker room. They ended up shooting 38-percent for the game, while making just 3-of-18 from three-point range. The 10th-ranked Buckeyes also shot 38-percent – but they were more aggressive on the boards with 12 offensive rebounds and 13 second-chance points. DeShaun Thomas led Ohio State with 17 points and seven rebounds. Traevon Jackson was the only scorer in double figures for Wisconsin. He had 10. Jackson and his teammate Ryan Evans made the All-Tournament squad. Aaron Craft of Ohio State was the tourney’s MVP. The Buckeyes improved to 26-7, and later earned a Number-two seed in the NCAA’s West Region. Wisconsin fell to 23-11.

Tags: wisconsin sports, basketball, proam, marquette, badgers