Day 2 Trippers

The final score sounded like a halftime score: 43-32.

The halftime score? It sounded like a football score: 21-12.

And if losing to Southwest Missouri State wasn’t awful enough for Wisconsin, there was the matter of the other coach.

Steve Alford, all grown up.

The Badgers scored the fewest points by any team in an NCAA tournament game since 1949, when Oregon State scored only 30 in losing to Oklahoma State.

No Wisconsin team had scored so few in a game since a 36-31 loss to USC in 1948.

In fact, the Wisconsin football team had twice as many points--24--at halftime of its 38-31 Rose Bowl victory over UCLA as the basketball team did at halftime Friday.

“Regarding our play, I’m very embarrassed, and I’m not going to try to say much more than that,” Wisconsin Coach Dick Bennett said.

His team spent 13 weeks in the top 25 this season and was ranked as high as 11th, but the fifth-seeded Badgers lost five of their last six games, flailing through a first-round loss to Alford’s 12th-seeded Bears in the NCAA East Regional.

Not that Wisconsin ever could beat Alford.

The Badgers were 0-8 against him during his four years as a player at Indiana, and you can bet nobody at Wisconsin--or most of the rest of the Big Ten--wants to see him become the next coach at Iowa.

“Devastating,” said Wisconsin forward Andy Kowske. “To have a year where we worked so hard and to get here and lay eggs like we did hurts a lot.

Eggs, bricks, take your pick.

Wisconsin missed more shots, 35, than Southwest Missouri State attempted, 33.

At halftime, the Badgers had five baskets. Five.

By the end of the game, they had 12.

Southwest Missouri State (21-10) had only 13 and shot only 39%, but a W is a W, and the Bears play Tennessee--another inconsistent offensive team--in the second round Sunday.

Wisconsin (22-10) expected to be playing in that game.

“I never thought anything like that could happen,” said Badger guard Ty Calderwood, who started it off by missing four quick shots from outside and went 0 for 8, missing six from three-point range.

On the bench, Bennett raged.

“I’m upset because I felt our guards immediately took us out of our game plan,” he said. “We came out and started jacking up threes.

“That has been an occurrence that’s plagued us since February. That’s why I’m so darned upset.

“I don’t want to lay it all on [Calderwood’s] shoulders, but we spoke in the locker room about needing to pass and be more selective. I don’t know what happened.”

Calderwood, a senior, didn’t either.

“I think, definitely, you start missing a couple, then you get kind of tight, and the coach is jumping on you and jumping on the team. You just want to make that one shot,” he said.

“We wanted to win so bad. You just want to make a couple of shots to get ahead.”

Ahead? Wisconsin led only once, at 2-0.

Southwest Missouri State jumped ahead by as many as 11 points in the first half and 13 in the second.

The Bears were led by 6-11 center Danny Moore. Even though he was double-teamed by Wisconsin almost every time he got the ball, he was the game’s high scorer.

With 12 points.

In the face of a persistent Southwest Missouri State defense and an increasingly big mental block, Wisconsin shot only 25.5% and only 20.8% in the first half.

“I just wish our kids would have focused a little more on the defensive end,” Alford deadpanned.

There was a bit of irony to it all, an Alford team turning in such a defensive performance.

“I was an offensive player. I wasn’t going to set any records defensively,” said Alford, who made seven three-pointers in Indiana’s 1987 NCAA championship victory over Syracuse. “I think when you get into coaching, maybe you put a little more emphasis on the things you didn’t do as a player.”

It’s hard to realize Alford, who was 8-2 as a player in the NCAA tournament, isn’t fresh out of college anymore, but at 34, he’s a father of three, and Big Ten players no longer have memories of him at Indiana.

“I myself, I have none,” Wisconsin guard Sean Mason said the day before the game.

Now he has one. And Alford didn’t even have to take a shot.