10-5 overall, 2-2 Big Ten<\/a>) never mounted another threat on the way to a second consecutive loss.<\/p>\n\u201cOur offensive struggles were so bad,\u201d Cronin said, \u201cthat it had our heads messed up on the other end\u201d of the court.<\/p>\n
Dailey scored 18 points but missed all five of his three-pointers, fitting for a team that made just one of 17 shots (5.9%) from long range. Bilodeau added 16 points and Perry had 15 after playing the second half with a bandage on his chin after taking a hard fall while diving for a loose ball in the first half.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you score that many points on the road,\u201d Dailey said, \u201cyou definitely should win the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
What happened on the other end of the court dictated a different outcome.<\/p>\n
UCLA\u2019s inability to keep Boyd out of the lane helped him score 20 points to lead the Badgers (10-5, 2-2), who won in large part by their volume of three-pointers, making 10 of 30 attempts (33.3%) from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n
Cronin said his team needed to do a better job of following the scouting report and learning how to stay in front of the ball defensively.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first half,\u201d Cronin said, \u201cwe didn\u2019t contain the ball, so it was layup or kick-out three because they have us on the run because we were getting beat off the dribble \u2014 the same thing at Iowa. That is the No. 1 thing. That has to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unveiling a turnover-choked, defensively challenged performance, UCLA played as if it were trying to top its awful first-half showing against Iowa from three days earlier.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t help that the Bruins were shorthanded from tipoff.<\/p>\n
With Clark unavailable, Cronin turned to Perry and pivoted to a smaller lineup featuring forward Brandon Williams alongside Bilodeau as the big men. Cronin said Williams earned the start based on his having been the best player in practice Monday. But a case of the stomach flu forced him to ask out of the game early and he wasn\u2019t much of a factor in his 17 minutes.<\/p>\n
For the opening 10 minutes, it felt like a repeat of Wisconsin\u2019s blowout victory over UCLA during the Big Ten tournament last March. The Badgers made seven of 11 three-pointers on the way to building a 20-point lead midway through the first half as Cronin continually tinkered with his lineup, trying to find a winning combination.<\/p>\n
It never came.<\/p>\n
He tried backup center Steven Jamerson II for a little more than a minute before yanking him after Jamerson committed a foul. He put in backup guard Jamar Brown and took him out after Brown gave up a basket and fumbled a pass out of bounds for a turnover. Backup guard Eric Freeny got his chance as well and airballed a three-pointer.<\/p>\n
Wisconsin surged ahead with an early 13-0 run and nearly matched it with a separate 11-0 push. The Bruins then lost Perry for the rest of the first half after he hit his chin while diving for a loose ball, pounding the court in frustration with a balled fist before holding a towel firmly against his injured chin during a timeout. <\/p>\n
Just when it seemed as if things couldn\u2019t get worse, they did. Williams limped off the court with cramps late in the first half and the Bruins failed to box out Wisconsin\u2019s Andrew Rohde on two possessions, leading to a putback and two free throws after he was fouled on another putback attempt.<\/p>\n
UCLA almost seemed fortunate to be down only 45-31 by the game\u2019s midpoint, though being on pace to give up 90 points couldn\u2019t have pleased a coach known for defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefensively,\u201d Cronin said, \u201cit\u2019s hard to win if you give up 80 [points] and 45 in the first half.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another comeback that came up short didn\u2019t make things any better.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to dig deep within ourselves,\u201d Perry said. \u201cCronin\u2019s been telling us since Day 1 what to do and sometimes it\u2019s just not clicking for all of us as a collective unit, and we\u2019ve just got to take this as a learning lesson. \u2026 At the end of the day, it\u2019s just defense. We have to lock in and lock down, that has to be our motto, 100%.\u201d<\/p>\n
So does this qualify as a crisis? How\u2019s the players\u2019 mindset amid their first losing streak of the season?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re good,\u201d Perry said. \u201cWe know it\u2019s a long season, we have a lot of other games to play, we\u2019ve still got at least two more months to play, you know? I mean, it\u2019s like coach Cronin said \u2014 it\u2019s like the NBA and the Big Ten \u2014 you win some, you lose some, but at the end of the day, how are you going to fight back?\u201d<\/p>\n
The answers will come soon enough, a quick reversal needed to avoid a season on the sink.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADISON, Wis.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Can a team be in crisis just a handful of games into conference play? UCLA is testing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,211728,28972,211723,211727,1862,211725,6010,71687,28331,85,3018,211726,193285,211724,211722,12216],"class_list":["post-397230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-bilodeau","tag-bruins","tag-consecutive-point","tag-dailey","tag-game","tag-hard-foul","tag-loss","tag-nolan-winter","tag-second","tag-sports","tag-team","tag-terrible-first-half","tag-three-pointer","tag-trent-perry","tag-ucla-man","tag-wisconsin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}