ST. LOUIS — Even though he wasn’t the first option, Wisconsin guard Bronson Koenig told forward Ethan Happ he wanted the last shot.
So Happ, who was there to inbound the ball with two seconds remaining in a tied game with Xavier, did what Koenig asked. And Koenig, who practices step-back jumpers in the corner before every game over his 6-foot-8 teammate Nigel Hayes, did exactly what he promised.
And somehow, some way, Wisconsin is back in the Sweet 16.
Koenig’s three-pointer as time expired gave the No. 7 seed Badgers a 66-63 second-round NCAA tournament victory over the No. 2 seeded Musketeers, sending them to Philadelphia for an East Regional semifinal against No. 6 seed Notre Dame.
“I like to have the ball in my hands in those kinds of situations because I believe in myself,” Koenig said. “I just let it fly and knew it was going in. I can’t really explain the feeling. It was my first real game winner like that. It was a lot of excitement.”
Never mind how improbable it was for Wisconsin to get here considering the exodus of players who had led the Badgers to consecutive Final Fours. Never mind Bo Ryan retiring at midseason, leaving the program to longtime assistant Greg Gard. Never mind a team that was 9-9 at one point with a steep uphill climb to even make the NCAA tournament.
What Wisconsin pulled off Sunday didn’t seem very likely with minutes or even seconds to go at Scottrade Center as it trailed 58-49 with 6:19 remaining and didn’t seem like it would have enough to complete the comeback.
But Koenig, who finished with 20 points and six three-pointers, drilled a deep pull-up over Xavier guard Myles Davis with 11.7 seconds left to tie the game. And then, instead of having to defend a final shot, Wisconsin got the ball back with 4.3 seconds remaining when Xavier guard Edmond Sumner barreled into Zak Showalter and was called for an offensive foul.
“He was going right all game,” Showalter said. “I anticipated it. I hadn’t had a charge in a long time so it felt good to get it at that moment. It’s a gamble (to go down), but that’s Wisconsin basketball. I knew what he was going to do. I knew he was going to attack his right hand, so I was going to take that away the best I could and it paid off.”
Then Gard, instead of trying to catch Xavier on its heels, took another gamble by having his team advance the ball past halfcourt and calling his final timeout to set up a play. Wisconsin, which has played several close games this season, doesn’t have a hard-and-fast rule about whether to call a timeout in that situation. But it certainly paid off this time.
“It’s just a gut feel,” assistant coach Lamont Paris said. “We thought we could get the ball in a better position and have something a little more organized.”
Koenig, a junior who started for the Badgers last season when they lost to Duke in the national title game, knew he didn’t have much time to get off a shot but it could not have unfolded any better.
Between Hayes taking two defenders to the post and sharpshooter Vitto Brown drawing the attention of Sumner on the wing, Koenig had plenty of room to come off a curl right in front of the Wisconsin bench, take the inbounds pass, turn around, dribble once to his right and shoot it over a defender of the same height in 6-foot-4 Remy Abell.
“He made a Bronson Koenig move,” Showalter said. “I’ve seen him make a lot of big shots, but none bigger than that one. That kid has a flair for the dramatic.”
And so does the Wisconsin program, which survived a slugfest with Pittsburgh 47-43 in the first round and has played some epic tournament games the last few years against the likes of Kentucky and Arizona.
But this group is carving out its own identity, coming back from the brink in mid-January to win 13 of its last 16 games.
“This game was kind of a microcosm of our season,” Gard said. “We knew we had some fight left in us and eventually the ball was going to go in.”
That belief wasn’t shaken, even as the Badgers turned an early 11-point lead into a 33-30 halftime deficit, even as foul trouble mounted and the game started to slip away in the second half, even as Hayes missed a tying free throw with 1:34 remaining and even as Happ committed a turnover with 58 seconds left.
“We knew (in January) we were at risk for not making the tournament,” Koenig said. “We didn’t want to be the only Wisconsin team (in 18 years) not to make the tournament. We had to step up and call a team meeting and let our feelings out, being such a new team with new guys that hadn’t had as much experience. After that, obviously the results speak for themselves and we’ve banded together really closely. That’s why we’ve been successful the past couple games.”
NCAA TOURNAMENT SECOND ROUND HIGHLIGHTS
