All Badgers

Biggest takeaways from Wisconsin Badgers' 97-93 win at No.15 Purdue Boilermakers

Wisconsin Badgers close the regular season with four straight victories over AP Top-15 teams.
Benjamin Worgull|
Mar 7, 2026; West Lafayette, Indiana, USA; Wisconsin Badgers guard Nick Boyd (2) drives to the basket as Purdue Boilermakers guard Braden Smith (3) defends during the first half at Mackey Arena.
Mar 7, 2026; West Lafayette, Indiana, USA; Wisconsin Badgers guard Nick Boyd (2) drives to the basket as Purdue Boilermakers guard Braden Smith (3) defends during the first half at Mackey Arena. | Jacob Musselman-Imagn Images

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Wisconsin Badgers

Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard used the word "soft" more than a handful of times during the first two months of the season, a stretch of time where it didn't appear the Badgers would have much chance to be competitive in the toughest games on their schedule.

Since the middle of January, the Badgers have turned from softies into the road villains, and it doesn't seem to particularly matter who is on the court.

Down a key starter and bench contributor, Wisconsin closed the regular season with another improbable result to the outside world but fully obtainable to those in the locker room, knocking off No.15 Purdue, 97-93, on the Boilermaker's senior day at Mackey Arena.

Wisconsin (24-9, 14-6 Big Ten) enters the postseason with four straight wins over ranked opponents, a success streak the program hasn't had since the 2014-15 Final Four team. These wins this season weren't cheapies either: at No.2 Michigan, at No.8 Illinois, vs. No.10 Michigan State, and on Saturday.

Once a place of horrors for Wisconsin, where it lost 35 of its first 37 trips, UW has won three of its last four in Mackey Arena and five of the last 11.

For a team that has preached the "next-man-up" mentality, and to win games during the season without starters John Blackwell and Andrew Rohde and reserves Jack Janicki and Austin Rapp on the floor, to knock off the Boilermakers with their frontcourt without iron-man center Nolan Winter is a different kind of statement.

"I'm just proud of the guys to handle the adversity that happened in the last game with Nolan going out," Blackwell said. "That's our guy. He does a lot of things on the court that we need and guys stepping in ... We just fought till the end."

Here are my takeaways from the regular-season finale

Great shooting shines again

Wisconsin's three top-15 wins all have one thing in common: the Badgers shot the heck out of the three-point shot.

The Badgers are 20-2 the last four seasons when they make 13 threes and their top-15 wins this season all fall in that category: 15 at Michigan, 16 at Illinois, 15 vs. Michigan State, and 18 against Purdue, a school record for a road game that the Badgers just reset last weekend at Washington.

They’re the only team to make 15+ threes in four wins over AP-ranked opponents over the last 20 years, gave them their most points ever in Mackey, and averaged 1.516 points per possession. That last number is Purdue's worst defensive performance in the KenPom era (since the 1997 season).

It's not as if one player got hot, either. Six of the eight players who played in the first half hit at least one three, led by Rapp and Blackwell each hitting three of them. It was an important start for both players, as Rapp was making his first start since losing his starting spot in November and Blackwell working his way out of a second shooting funk of the year.

UW only attempted four two-point shots in the first half, only one after the 15:05 mark, but the number of fouls players drew around the low post and kickouts from around the rim skews the numbers. UW finished with 19 assists on 29 made baskets.

"You can talk about the threes and how many we made, but you got to look at how they were created," Boyd said. "Two feet in the paint from everybody. When you are shooting horse shots like that, it's kind of like a 50-50 percent chance they go in."

The only player to hit multiple threes in each half was Aleksas Bieliauskas, who helped Wisconsin sink Michigan with his five threes in January and contributed again with 16 points and four threes.

"He listens really, really well because yesterday in practice I told him, AB, you're going to have to shoot five threes tomorrow," Gard said. "He shot five. I didn't tell him he couldn't shoot more, but you had to shoot five. With how the coverages and Boyd and Blackwell putting so much pressure of dribble penetration, playing out of the ball screen, and how this team is built, it was his opportunity."

The threes were huge as the game wore on because it forced Purdue to start hedging, and that allowed Nick Boyd the sliver he needed to take over the game. The senior made only one three-pointer but scored relentlessly in the second half by attacking the lane and finishing at the rim with his left hand.

Boyd pushed Gard to let him go back in the game late in the first half when he was on the bench with foul trouble, but Gard held firm, figuring that sitting him for the final 4:45 of the first half would yield dividends down the closing stretch. He was right, putting the ball in Boyd's hands and letting him create.

"March is about who can make plays," said Boyd, whose 22.7 ppg in six games against AP top-25 opponents is tops in the Big Ten. "When you have two of the best guards in the country (him and Blackwell), it's what happens."

Wisconsin's defense delivered in the crunch

Down an important interior defense and an undervalued defensive guard, Wisconsin had trouble adjusting early with its spacing.

Badger-killer Fletcher Loyer did nothing to hurt his career shooting percentage against Wisconsin (50.0 percent overall, 47.6 percent from three, 88.9 percent from the free-throw line) by scoring a team-high 23 points (8-for-13, 6-for-9 3FG) but made everyone else on the roster work.

Braden Smith got his points (20) but needed 18 shots to get there. He had nine assists but could have had more had UW not flocked to Trey Kaufman-Renn and Oscar Cluff on the interior. The duo combined for 27 points on 10 field goals but committed five turnovers and never took the game over. C.J. Cox was the hero Wednesday after scoring 27 points in a four-point win at Northwestern, but the Badgers held the sophomore to seven points on 2-for-7 shooting.

Purdue shot 50.7 percent from the floor and was +12 in rebounding (+9 on the offensive glass), but the Badgers buckled down in two critical areas when it mattered most.

The Boilermakers got into the bonus with 11:37 remaining in the game, taking advantage of some careless defense and a Blackwell offensive foul. Instead of Purdue living at the free throw line, where they shoot 74.2 percent on the season, UW played aggressive defense without fouling. UW committed only three fouls the rest of the game, all in the final two minutes, but Kaufman-Renn and Cluff went just 3-for-5 at the line.

The assignment of Kaufman-Renn, a third-team All-American, went to Rapp, who lost his starting job in November because of his struggles defensively and rebounding.

"There's the ascension he has made," Gard said of Rapp. "For the most part did a pretty good job. His game and his toughness has gotten better. Also he's understood. I don't know how much defensive requirements he's had in the past, and the know-how of what we do in our system. It's been educational for him to learn how well you have to play on that end of the floor if you want to play on the upper echelon of college basketball."

The other area was the final minute and Purdue's last three possessions. After Boyd put UW ahead by three with a jumper with 49 seconds left, Purdue managed to score only two free throws on posessions that had six shots and three offensive rebounds.

A win for Winter

Blackwell, Boyd and Gard shouted out Winter in their first answers to the media, rallying around their fallen center who didn't make the trip in order to rest his injured left ankle. Boyd went as far as to say he wouldn't be surprised to see Winter play next week when the Badgers open Big Ten Tournament play on either Thursday or Friday afternoon.

"All early feedback that I've gotten from our medical people is they are very satisfied with where he's at in terms of his progress each day," Gard said. "We felt it was in his best interest to leave him back because he had four different recovery, rehab, treatment sessions today. Knowing that he couldn't play, to leave him back in Madison to be able to have access to do that. He had a full day. I don't think he even could watch the game, other than his phone, because he was booked.

"It's day-to-day. We'll see how he responds. Every day has been another step forward, no pun intended. We feel much better than when it happened Wednesday night."

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Benjamin Worgull
BENJAMIN WORGULL

Benjamin Worgull has covered Wisconsin men's basketball since 2004, having previously written for Rivals, USA Today, 247sports, Fox Sports, the Associated Press, the Janesville Gazette, and the Wisconsin State Journal.

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