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Wisconsin Badgers WBB Bows Out of Big Ten Tournament in Second Round

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Wisconsin Badgers women's basketball
Feb 1, 2024; Columbus, OH, USA; Ohio State Buckeyes guard Taylor Thierry (2) and forward Cotie McMahon (32) go for a rebound between Wisconsin Badgers forward Serah Williams (25) and guard Brooke Schramek (3) during the first half of the NCAA women’s basketball game at Value City Arena.

The Wisconsin Badgers women’s basketball team came to Minneapolis for the Big Ten Tournament hoping to score an upset, or maybe two, but will instead be going home only one game. Penn State came out shooting hot in the first quarter and Wisconsin just couldn’t keep up.

Here is the full Big Ten Tournament second round recap:

Wisconsin Badgers WBB Falters in Big Ten Tournament Loss

Final Score

Wisconsin Badgers (13-16 overall, 6-12 Big Ten): 56
Penn State Nittany Lions (19-11 overall, 9-9 Big Ten): 80

Four Factors

eFG%: 40.4
Turnover%: 19.4
Off. Rebound%: 28.8
FTA/FGA: 28.1

Key Stats

FG%: 35.1 (20-of-57)
Opp. FG%: 49.2 (32-of-65)
3P%: 23.1 (6-of-26)
Opp. 3P%: 27.3 (6-of-22)
FT%: 62.5 (10-of-16)
Opp. FT%: 90.9 (10-of-11)
Points Per Possession: 0.836
Opponent Points Per Possession: 1.231
Rebounds: 29 (11 offensive)
Opponent Rebounds: 44 (16 offensive)
Turnovers: 13
Forced Turnovers: 10


Team Leaders

  • Ronnie Porter: 15 points (6-of-12 FG, 1-of-4 3P), one assist, one steal, -23
  • Serah Williams: 10 points (5-of-8 FG), 10 rebounds (three offensive), three blocks, -12 (16th straight double-double…a BIG TEN RECORD!)
  • Brooke Schramek: nine points (4-of-5 FG, 1-of-2 3P), two rebounds, one assist, one block, -22
  • Natalie Leuzinger: eight points (1-of-10 FG, 1-of-8 3P), six rebounds (one offensive), three assists, -10

Penn State Team Leaders

  • Makenna Marisa: 10 points (2-of-5 FG, 2-of-4 3P), four rebounds (two offensive), five assists, one block, +12
  • Kylie Lavelle: 14 points (6-of-7 FG, 2-of-2 3P), three rebounds (one offensive), +12
  • Ashley Owusu: 13 points (5-of-11 FG, 1-of-2 3P), six rebounds (two offensive), two assists, one steal, +15
  • Jayla Oden: eight points (4-of-7 FG, 0-of-2 3P), three rebounds, two assists, one block, three steals, +11

Three-ish Thoughts

1. Let’s start off with some positive news. Serah Williams recorded her 16th straight double-double on Thursday night and that breaks the Big Ten record of 15, previously held by Iowa’s Megan Gustafson. Now…this was not the most impressive game of Williams’ young career, but a record is a record and her name is now etched in the Big Ten annals for all time.


She started off the game extremely slowly, registering a stat line of 0-of-1 FG, one turnover in the first quarter, but she picked it up in the second half. In the third quarter alone, Williams scored six points and hauled in seven rebounds as the Badgers tried, fruitlessly I might add, to mount a comeback.


After destroying Penn State, to the tune of 31 points and 15 rebounds, in their first meeting, the Nittany Lions were going to make anyone other than Williams beat them on Thursday and, well, that was a pretty good plan! Congratulations to Serah Williams on an impressive achievement at the end of an impressive season.

2. Alright, outside of Williams setting that record there wasn’t much else good for Wisconsin in this one. Ok, wait, I lied! The Badgers only committed 13 turnovers (season average 18.8) and their turnover rate of 19.4% was lower than their normal 22.9% mark. When having a turnover rate lower than 22.9, the Badgers were 10-6 before this game so this is usually a pretty good marker of success for UW.

Strangely, three of their five best turnover rate games have been losses (vs. Northwestern, vs. Nebraska, Thursday night vs. Penn State) this year, but those games have also seen some pretty poor shooting performances by Wisconsin. Against the Nittany Lions, Serah Williams (five) and Ronnie Porter (three) were the two main turnover culprits, which is rare, and that also contributed to the Badgers offensive struggles. D’Yanis Jimenez and Halle Douglass, who usually have high turnover numbers, both took care of the ball well on Thursday.

3. The Wisconsin Badgers defense has confounded me for the better part of the last month and nothing I saw on Thursday night clarified, uh, anything on that end of the floor. The Badgers look confused on defense so regularly now that I noted with surprise when they played a “normal” defensive possession sans pointing/scrambling/exasperation. I don’t know for sure since I’m not on the team, but it looked like UW sometimes calls their defense on their way down the floor to try and surprise/confuse their opponent by switching between man and zone from possession to possession.


Sitting courtside on Thursday I think I heard/saw signals that corresponded to “man” defense and “zone” defense but instead of confusing Penn State, it just seemed to muddle up whatever the Wisconsin players were trying to do, especially in regards to rotations (see: above highlight). The Badgers have some very good individual defenders (Serah Williams, Sania Copeland) but the rest of the team are probably average to below average individually on that end. Unless this really gets hammered out in the offseason, UW may be better served simplifying their defensive calls next year.

An area that was particularly egregious for UW on Thursday night was transition defense. Senior Brooke Schramek touched on this postgame: “Our communication was a little bit off. If a team sees another team struggling on the transition defensive side, they’re going to attack that, and that’s what [Penn State] did.” I touched on it in my running notes doc I had up during the game too: “UW’s transition defense is embarrassing.”

The numbers back up what both Schramek and I noticed too. Penn State had 10 fast break points (UW had one) and, despite the lower than usual turnover numbers for the Badgers, PSU also scored 16 points off Wisconsin miscues (UW had three). She obviously expanded on this with the rest of her answer, but Marisa Moseley succinctly answered my question about defensive confusion flatly saying, “It felt like we really weren’t communicating very well.”

4. I seriously doubt these two plays would’ve changed the outcome of the game, but Wisconsin had two chances to convert three-point plays in the first four-ish minutes of the third quarter and missed the free throw both times.

With 8:50 left in the third quarter Serah Williams made a layup (her first points of the game), got pumped up, and then missed the free throw. While that would’ve only cut the lead to 15, the Badgers started to play better defense on the next couple of possessions and could’ve maybe cut into the lead more with more “momentum” from Williams’ three-point play.

A few minutes later (5:46 left in the quarter), after a pair of Ronnie Porter jumpers, Brooke Schramek drove to the basket, got fouled, and made her layup to make the deficit 14 points. She, of course, missed the free throw and PSU hit a three on their next possession and the Badgers never got that close for the rest of the game.


Again, it is unlikely that these two specific missed free throws would’ve made this a closer game, but I can definitely say it took the air out of the UW crowd a bit (I was sitting by the band and they really wanted to get into the game, but never really could) and the players certainly weren’t happy about it either.

5. RANDOM THOUGHTS: Awful shooting night for Natalie Leuzinger (1-of-10 FG, 1-of-8 3P) but she was really good everywhere else on the court and the Badgers will miss her presence next year if she doesn’t elect to return; PSU’s Ashley Owusu was dominant in the first quarter but took on more of a facilitator/connecter role the rest of the game; I’ll probably have a whole separate post on this, but Ali Brigham’s defense on Serah Williams was super solid; Tessa Grady can shoot the rock, man and I love her potential future role next season as “break in case of emergency” offensive option; Penn State’s depth, and Carolyn Kieger’s willingness to use it as a strength, is impressive: they had 10 players play more than 14:53 minutes but none play more than 25:47; I’m glad Leilani Kapinus was able to return to the game after going down with an ankle/foot injury that looked really bad; this also wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but almost every weird loose-ball bounce went PSU’s way which, when combined with everything else, made it a near certainty that Wisconsin wouldn’t pull the upset; sorry to Halle Douglass, but this block ruled so hard.


Final Thoughts on the Wisconsin Badgers WBB Loss to Penn State

There was kind of a weird mood during the Wisconsin press conference after the game. Marisa Moseley, Brooke Schramek, and Serah Williams all seemed to be caught in an emotional limbo between the disappointment of how the season ended but pride and excitement in how the season went overall. When I asked Moseley what she would be most proud of from this season when she looks back on it in a couple of days, she took a long pause and then said this:

“I think probably the thing that I would be most proud of is that despite how this ended, the steps that we’re taking and the way that we’re trying to build this and the way that we’re trying to help each of the young women on the team become a better version of themselves, that to me is really why you should be doing this. 

The wins are — and I love to win, but I can’t just be focused on that. So I think just the improvement of them and the challenges that we went through together and the growth that all of us, myself included, had this year.”


In her last game as a Wisconsin Badger, Brooke Schramek waxed poetic about what her time in Madison meant and what sort of advice she’d offer to younger players who will be looked to as leaders next year. “I tell them all the time, have fun every single day. This goes by so fast. It’s crazy to me that I’m already a senior. I was talking to [fellow seniors] Halle [Douglass] and Nat [Leuzinger], we started in the dorms together, and look at us now. It goes by really, really fast. Take advantage of every single day you have.”

After winning back-to-back road games at Rutgers and Minnesota on Feb. 17 and Feb. 20, the Badgers lost their last four games of the season. The “closest” loss was a 16-point defeat at Maryland and the three others were all by 24 or more points. I don’t know much (read: anything) about NIT bracketology, but I’d guess that one win in any of their last four games would’ve secured a spot for them in the postseason. Now, with a 13-16 record and four-game losing streak in tow, I’m not so sure.

Personally, I’d love to see the Badgers play one more time this year. They made great strides as a team from November until now and a postseason game is an excellent reward for the season and also a worthwhile jumping off point for the offseason/next season. As I’ve said multiple times this year, Moseley has the program squarely pointed in the right direction and, even though it’s going slowly, I’m excited to see the next step in her rebuild come to fruition.


Her first season? Eight wins. Last year? 11 wins. This year? 13 wins. Next year? I don’t know, but it could, quite easily, be her best season in Madison yet. There are obviously things that need to be addressed, and we’ll get into them this offseason, but if you can’t appreciate how things are trending you probably have an extreme misunderstanding of Wisconsin’s standing in the women’s college basketball landscape.

Next Game: Maybe an NIT bid? Who knows?!?

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Drew Hamm is a seasoned sports journalist with an extensive background in covering the Wisconsin Badgers. He has previously held positions as the site manager at Bucky's 5th Quarter and founder of Badgers Ball Knower. Currently, he contributes as a staff writer for BadgerNotes.com.

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