Wisconsin dominates the glass, Hoyas, at Maui Invite

LAHAINA, Hawaii — As the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team works through some early-season kinks, the one thing the Badgers have shown they can do consistently well is rebound.

They somehow managed to take their dominance on the glass to a new level Tuesday at the Lahaina Civic Center.

The effort was led by sophomore forward Ethan Happ, who finished with 19 points and 15 rebounds to lift No. 16 Wisconsin into the championship game of the Maui Invitational with a 73-57 semifinal victory over Georgetown.

Wisconsin coach Greg Gard called his team “relentless” after the Badgers posted a massive 50-21 edge in rebounding, including 20-1 on the offensive glass, to win the rubber match in their third meeting against the Hoyas in as many seasons.

The Badgers (4-1) will play either No. 4 North Carolina or Oklahoma State in tonight’s final. Tipoff is scheduled for 9 p.m.

“Really, it was just a lot of work,” said Happ, who grabbed eight offensive rebounds en route to his 11th career double-double. “When you’re tired, you’ve just got to bust down to the block and get position before the shot goes up. That just shows how much we were willing to work that we were getting that many opportunities.”

Through five games, Wisconsin is plus-96 in rebounding margin. The Badgers have finished with a double-digit cushion on the glass in all five of those games.

“I think it’s become the identity of this team,” Gard said. “There are times when it’s not pretty. In fact, there are times when we will have to win ugly.

“And that may be one of the areas where we can really make up for deficiencies in other areas.”

Senior point guard Bronson Koenig scored a game-high 20-points for the Badgers, who fell to the Hoyas in the 2K Classic in New York a year ago after beating them in the Battle 4 Atlantis two seasons ago.

Koenig, an Aquinas High School graduate, went 2 of 12 from the field in last season’s meeting with Georgetown, but it was a much different story Tuesday. He set the tone early by scoring 10 points in the opening 5 minutes, 49 seconds of the game to help the Badgers build a 15-8 lead.

The Badgers trailed for only 18 seconds against the Hoyas. Through two games in Maui, Wisconsin’s biggest deficit has been two points.

“I just tried to come out and be aggressive,” Koenig said. “This year, I’m really just trying to stay on attack the whole game and just be consistently more aggressive, because that opens up everything else, not only for myself but for Ethan and kick-outs and stuff like that.”

Wisconsin also got a lift in the second half from senior forward Vitto Brown and sophomore swingman Khalil Iverson, who combined for all 19 of their points after halftime.

Brown finished with nine points, all on 3-pointers. Two of his 3s came after the Hoyas (2-4) had cut the Badgers’ lead to single digits.

It was a nice bounce-back effort from Brown, who ended up in Gard’s doghouse a day earlier and only played 14 minutes in Wisconsin’s quarterfinal win over Tennessee.

“Vitto did what he does well,” Gard said. “He did some good things defensively, was pretty active on the glass, made some good decisions on bounce passes around the rim and knocked down shots when he had the opportunity.”

Iverson contributed 10 points and seven rebounds against the Hoyas. He also teamed up with senior guard Zak Showalter to help limit Georgetown senior guard Rodney Pryor, who scored 26 points in a victory over No. 13 Oregon on Monday, to 14 points on 4-for-10 shooting.

Junior guard L.J. Peak scored 18 points to lead the Hoyas, who shot 38.3 percent and managed just 0.88 points per possession against the Badgers.

Georgetown got 7-foot senior center Bradley Hayes back from a four-game suspension, but that didn’t prevent the Hoyas from being crushed on the boards by the Badgers.

Wisconsin outscored Georgetown 19-1 in second-chance points and 38-16 in the paint, mammoth disparities for a game involving two teams from power conferences.

“They do a great job of that,” Georgetown coach John Thompson III said. “We have to do a better job of that. We have to get some guys that understand that it’s not about points and minutes and care about all aspects of the game.”

The Hoyas were within 32-29 at halftime, but Happ scored the first six points of the second half to give Wisconsin some breathing room.

The outburst from Happ came in a span of three possessions: He made two free throws after grabbing his own miss and drawing a foul, went coast-to-coast and finished with a one-handed dunk in transition following a Georgetown turnover and finished the spurt by driving hard to the rim for another basket.

“I thought Ethan did a good job in the first half of staying hungry,” Koenig said. “And there were a couple of hooks that didn’t go quite his way, but I just told him at halftime to keep shooting them because they’re eventually going to go in because he was missing by an inch.

“So he listened to me and everyone saw what he did in the second half.”

A day after committing 18 turnovers vs. Tennessee, Wisconsin finished with 13 against Georgetown. The Badgers’ best stretch of sound decision-making came early in the second half, when they went 19 consecutive possessions without a turnover.

“I don’t think we’re where we need to be or can be anywhere near that yet,” Gard said. “But tonight was definitely a step in the right direction.”