Wisconsin Badgers Women’s Basketball Falls in Tight Battle Against Nebraska

The Wisconsin Badgers women’s basketball team battled back in their first game of 2024 but came up short against the visiting Nebraska Cornhuskers. Serah Williams returned after a two-game absence, and made a big difference, but some suspect officiating down the stretch squashed any chance UW had of a comeback. Here is the full recap:

Wisconsin Badgers Women’s Basketball Falls to Nebraska

Final Score

Wisconsin Badgers (7-6 overall, 0-3 Big Ten): 57
Nebraska Cornhuskers (11-3 overall, 3-0 Big Ten): 69

Four Factors

eFG%: 41.8
Turnover%: 22.2
Off. Rebound%: 36.8
FTA/FGA: 13.1

Key Stats

FG%: 36.1 (22-of-61)
Opp. FG%: 43.9 (25-of-57)
3P%: 21.2 (7-of-33)
Opp. 3P%: 33.3 (9-of-27)
FT%: 75.0 (6-of-8)
Opp. FT%: 55.6 (10-of-18)
Points Per Possession: 0.905
Opponent Points Per Possession: 1.095
Rebounds: 38 (14 offensive)
Opponent Rebounds: 36 (12 offensive)
Turnovers: 14
Forced Turnovers: 11

NAT AT THE BUZZER🚨 pic.twitter.com/1fFtPLi14S

— Wisconsin Women’s Basketball (@BadgerWBB) January 5, 2024

Team Leaders

• Natalie Leuzinger: 13 points (5-of-8 FG, 3-of-6 3P), three rebounds (three offensive), two assists, one steal, -4
• Serah Williams: 16 points (6-of-14 FG, 0-of-2 3P), nine rebounds (two offensive), one assist, three blocks, -1
• Ronnie Porter: 10 points (5-of-11 FG, 0-of-5 3P), nine rebounds (four offensive), seven assists, -15
• Brooke Schramek: 12 points (4-of-11 FG, 2-of-8 3P), three rebounds (one offensive), three assists, -5

Nebraska Team Leaders

• Natalie Potts: 16 points (7-of-10 FG, all scored in the second half), five rebounds (three offensive), one assist, three steals, +14
• Alexis Markowski: 13 points (4-of-10 FG, 2-of-5 3P), 11 rebounds (one offensive), one steal, +12

Three-ish Thoughts on the  Loss to Nebraska

1. Serah Williams was back in the starting lineup after missing the previous two games and, obviously, it made a huge difference on both ends for the Badgers. The first four offensive possessions of the game saw UW trying to get Williams the ball, presumably to get her immediately into the flow of the game, but only one of them resulted in points. After they stopped forcing it to Williams the offense started to run much better and Williams was able to pick her spots.

I think that her offense had more rust to shake off than her defense, as she wasn’t particularly efficient in the paint, but the defense didn’t really miss a beat. She had three blocked shots and had Nebraska star big Alexis Markowski (who only scored five points in the final 37 minutes) under lock and key for most of the game.

Williams had the best plus/minus (-1) of any Wisconsin player, hit the glass hard, and made all four of her free throws. We’ll discuss the ridiculous technical foul that was called on her below, because Big Ten officials deserve their own section in which we can deliver the appropriate opprobrium.

2. About halfway through the second quarter you saw the Badgers playing a defensive position down a player and probably wondered “what the hell?” Well, the reason was that freshman guard D’Yanis Jimenez was injured back under the other basket. The Florida native had to be helped off the court by two people and, while she did return to the bench at the start of the second half, she did so with a large ice pack on her knee. Jimenez went up for a layup and landed awkwardly, potentially tweaking something in her knee/ankle/leg/lower body.

So far this season Jimenez has been Wisconsin’s second-leading scorer and best three-point shooter while also chipping in across the box score with timely rebounds and steals. While there are very clearly times you remember she’s a true freshman, she forced her way into the starting lineup with her play and I’m hopeful that this injury isn’t serious.

I won’t delve too deeply into what the team would do if Jimenez has to miss an extended period of time, but their next game is on Sunday which is a pretty quick turnaround and they don’t have longer than two days off between games until after Jan. 16. Natalie Leuzinger would probably slot back into the starting five while Tessa Grady might see an increase in minutes too.

3. Speaking of Natalie Leuzinger, she was a big spark off the bench against Nebraska and played every second (except eight) of the game after the first quarter. She made three of her six three-pointers and all three of her rebounds were on the offensive end. Her buzzer beater at the end of the third quarter was awesome and then she hit a three with 7:23 left in the game that cut the Huskers’ lead to one, which was also awesome.

Nat’s Leuz Out!!💡 pic.twitter.com/b6u5ABmi1f

— Wisconsin Women’s Basketball (@BadgerWBB) January 5, 2024

After a rough stretch of play (11 points in three games, 4-of-15 FG), Leuzinger has scored in double-figures in her last three games and her WORST shooting performance was against Nebraska, where she made 62.5% of her field goals. She only has two turnovers over the same time frame while racking up four assists and four steals.

With Jimenez potentially missing time, Leuzinger could see an uptick in minutes and offensive responsibility moving forward and she seems ready for it.

4. I need to make this clear before I start ranting: 99.9% of the time your favorite team did not lose because of the refs. This game for the Wisconsin Badgers against Nebraska falls into that 99.9% category. HOWEVAH, the technical foul call on Williams with 50 seconds left in the game was horrendous.

If you missed the game, Williams stuffed Markowski’s shit with 50 seconds left and UW down six, then she yelled in celebration, and immediately got T’d up. What the hell is that? Policing player emotions when they aren’t being expressed physically against an opponent is such Cop Behavior that I was at a loss for words.

Of course they call a technical on Serah Williams for being passionate

— Badger WBB HQ (@BadgerWBBHQ) January 5, 2024

Again, Wisconsin was down six with under a minute to go and the Huskers were going to get the ball back after the block, so a comeback was unlikely. But a comeback was completely ruled out after Nebraska made four free throws in two seconds of game time thanks to the refs.

Big Ten officiating is a problem in football and somehow it is even worse in basketball! Every night online there are multiple fanbases, often in the same game, complaining about how the officiating is making the games nigh unwatchable. It is bad for the players and coaches who don’t know how a game is going to be officiated from period to period and it makes for a bad product for fans who don’t want to know the name of/recognize any officials but do since the refs are ALWAYS on TV doing stupid shit.

Final Thought

This was a rough game for the Wisconsin Badgers women’s basketball team. I mean that in the sense of timing more than their play on the court. If this wasn’t the first game back for Williams after a long layoff and if Jimenez doesn’t get hurt, I think Wisconsin wins. But, that’s not what happened and now UW sits at 0-3 in conference play.

Three of Wisconsin’s next four games are on the road (at Illinois, Michigan, Iowa) and while I’m confident they’ll be competitive in all of them, I don’t see them winning any. Getting Northwestern at home SHOULD be a win, but the ‘Cats have been playing better lately and certainly won’t be an automatic W. It is worth noting that since winning their first three games of the season, Wisconsin has alternated two-game losing streaks with two-game winning streaks and the Nebraska loss was their second in a row.

I know that moral victories are useless in big-time college sports, but the Badgers are playing better than last year and while a 12-point loss to the Huskers looks bad, it was much closer than that. Their only truly Bad Loss this year was against Purdue. Even the Iowa and K-State losses were more competitive than they looked based on box score watching.

The Illini haven’t played up to their potential yet this year and have lost four of their last five games, so they’ll be looking to right the ship against UW on Sunday. However, if Wisconsin can start hot and get Illinois to start pressing…perhaps a big time road victory awaits?

Next Game: Sunday, Jan. 7; at Illinois Fighting Illini; 2:00 p.m. CT; B1G+; State Farm Center

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