Hammered at home: Ice-cold Badgers drop second straight game as Luka Garza leads Hawkeyes to victory

Wisconsin forward Micah Potter shoots over Iowa center Luka Garza in the first half of the Badgers’ loss to the Hawkeyes Thursday night at the Kohl Center in Madison. Potter led the Badgers with 23 points and 11 rebounds. 

AMBER ARNOLD, STATE JOURNAL

The University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team dug a hole Thursday night and couldn’t get out.

The Badgers would nearly climb out of it only to have Iowa shovel another load of dirt on top of them. That happened multiple times and left senior guard Brad Davison and his teammates frustrated and exhausted.

Demoralized? Davison and senior center Micah Potter say no, even after a 77-62 setback against the No. 11 Hawkeyes left UW with defeats in consecutive games for the first time this season.

Senior center Luka Garza scored 30 points and junior forward Joe Wieskamp added 17 for the Hawkeyes (16-6, 10-5 Big Ten), who used a 14-0 run early in the game to build a big lead and a 13-2 burst late to put the game away.

“It’s kind of been the story of our season,” Davison said. “We can’t get over that hump.”

The main reason — again — was an offense that has some great moments that don’t make up for long stretches of failure.

UW opened the game by missing 26 of its first 30 shots and went through a 1-for-12 stretch late in the game. The Badgers finished at 30% overall from the field, including a woeful 8 of 36 on 2-point shots and 6 of 14 on attempts near the rim.

Potter bounced back from a poor performance by producing 23 points and 11 rebounds to lead the Badgers (15-8, 9-7), while Davison made five 3-pointers while adding 15 points.