Buffalo-Wisconsin Preview

Wisconsin has gotten plenty of time to recover from its trip to the West Coast and will try to avoid showing any rust in its final tune-up before Big Ten play.

Wisconsin has gotten plenty of time to recover from its trip to the West Coast and will try to avoid showing any rust in its final tune-up before Big Ten play.

The sixth-ranked Badgers will also seek to take another sterling record into the conference season after a visit from Buffalo on Sunday night.

Wisconsin made just one trip outside its borders - winning the eight-team Battle 4 Atlantis over Thanksgiving - before a 68-56 win at California on Monday. Nigel Hayes pushed his team to 11-1 with 17 points and a career high-tying 13 rebounds, his third career double-double.

"Nigel was great the whole game," forward Frank Kaminsky said. ''He was doing a lot of things inside, setting the tone inside. When Nigel is playing like that, it makes it so much easier for everyone around him. He had a great game from start to finish."

Kaminsky had 14 points and matched a career best with his sixth consecutive game in double figures.

The senior will try to set a personal mark while leading the Badgers to a win before their conference opener Wednesday at home game against Penn State.

Wisconsin had a school-record 16-0 start last season before a 1-5 stretch cost it a chance at the Big Ten title. The Badgers finished tied for second - three games behind Michigan - but later made a run to their third Final Four.

Buffalo (7-2) will face its second national semifinalist from last season Sunday and lost 71-52 at No. 1 Kentucky on Nov. 16. That scoreline is somewhat deceiving since the Bulls held a 38-33 halftime lead and forced the Wildcats to abandon their platoon system at points before being held to 14 second-half points.

The Bulls, who have never played Wisconsin, have won three in a row and four of five on the road but those wins have come against unheralded teams. Buffalo is 0-14 against AP Top 25 teams since the beginning of the 1997-98 season and has lost by an average of 30.7 points in its 10 road games against those opponents.

The Bulls didn't face any AP Top 25 teams while going 19-10 in former Duke star Bobby Hurley's first season as coach. They lost three starters, including MAC player of the year Javon McCrea, from a team that finished atop the conference's East division.

Justin Moss has replaced some of that production by averaging 17.3 points in his second season with the program, a major jump from his mere 3.8 points per game in 2013-14. It's the second-highest improvement in scoring among Division I players, trailing only Washington State's Josh Hawkinson.

Moss had 24 points - two shy of matching a career high - in an 88-62 rout of Niagara on Dec. 19.

The junior forward was held to eight points on 3-of-13 shooting in the loss to Kentucky.