Getting Marquette and Wisconsin together for a game of basketball is like having two brothers fighting: You never know who’s going to come out on top, as the last three matchups have been decided by nine points or less.
Wisconsin (6-2) entered the season as the No. 24 team in the country. But its light schedule and two early losses bounced the Badgers out of the top-25. The Badgers first loss came in a close game to UNLV 68-65 on Nov. 20. Neither team ever led by more than five points.
Wisconsin’s second loss came at the hands of Big East foe Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish beat Wisconsin 58-51 in the Old Spice Classic Championship. With 4:18 left in the game, Wisconsin was up 48-43, but Notre Dame went on a 15-0 run that was snapped by a three-point hit with two seconds left in the game.
Marquette and Wisconsin have had one overlapping foe at this point in the season: Prairie View A&M. The Badgers beat the Panthers 99-55 on Nov. 14 at home. Marquette downed the Panthers 97-58 at home on Nov. 12.
This season’s Badgers are another prototypical Bo Ryan coached team: They play tough defense and do not beat themselves.
This year’s version features a little bit more flair in the form of senior forward Jon Leuer, who is tied for 41st in the country with 20 points per game and adds 7.8 rebounds for good measure.
Leuer is a tall, lanky and extremely talented forward who led the Badgers in points, rebounds and blocks a year ago.
This past summer, Leuer was named to the USA Men’s Basketball Select Team, a group of elite college basketball players, who worked with Team USA. Villanova coach Jay Wright said Leuer is a future NBA player.
“He’s got great size, he puts it on the floor, he passes it, he can shoot it,” Wright said to CBSSports.com’s Gary Parrish. “He’s just a ballplayer.”
The 6-foot-10-inch “ballplayer” presents Marquette with a difficult matchup. Redshirt sophomore Chris Otule is the only player close to Leuer’s height at 6-feet-11-inches but he’s too slow to keep up with Leuer on the perimeter. Look for senior forward Jimmy Butler, at 6-feet-6-inches, to draw the assignment and hope he can continue to be an undersized warrior inside that he has been throughout his Marquette career.
Junior guard Jordan Taylor is the Badgers’ second leading scorer at 15.1 points per game and makes up for the departure of Trevon Hughes who had led the Badgers in scoring the last three meetings with Marquette at 14 points per game.
Wisconsin owns the all-time head-to-head matchup with Marquette 63-53. But Marquette has won two of the last three matchups, including a 70-66 victory at the Kohl Center in 2007 to end Wisconsin’s 28-game home winning streak.
But those successes are in the past and this is a revamped Marquette team. Departed players like Jerel McNeal, Wes Matthews, Dominic James and Lazar Hayward were the keys in the past, now it’s time for Butler and company to make their mark on the rivalry.
