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Wisconsin makes it look easy against Pacific

Dec 24, 2006 - 8:04 AM MADISON, Wisconsin (Ticker) -- A brief cold spell did little to cool off Wisconsin.

Kammron Taylor scored 17 points and Alando Tucker added 15 as No. 5 Wisconsin rolled to its eighth straight win, an 83-47 drubbing of Pacific.

The Badgers (12-1) couldn't miss at the outset and jumped out to leads of 16-2 and 20-4. They hit nine of their first 10 shots and seemed on the way to an early knockout.

Wisconsin just as quickly lost its shooting touch, hitting four of its next 18 from the floor to allow Pacific to claw back and get within 38-29 at on a 3-pointer by Wolfgang Raffety with 17:50 left.

Still, Pacific coach Bob Thomason said he never felt his team was in contention to pull off an upset.

"I don't think it was ever real serious," Thomason said. "There were times we hung in there, 10 to eight points, but it didn't seem to me to be a real serious eight to 10 points. I think they had command pretty much all the way."

The Badgers proved Thomason right, outscoring the Tigers, 24-8, to boost the lead to 62-37 on Jason Bohannon's shot from the arc with 9:57 remaining.

Wisconsin connected on 11 of its final 15 shots and finished 52 percent (24-of-46) for the game, including 9-of-17 from 3-point range.

"It's still the winningest program in California in like the last five years," Badgers coach Bo Ryan said of Pacific. "They still know how to win games, they're going to be tough in their league, but they are really young and I thought this was going to be one of those types of games where if we didn't get into them, try to take them out of any kind of comfort zone on offense. ... This was the kind of team we did not need to get behind."

Brian Butch and Joe Krabbenhoft added 11 points apiece for the Badgers, who won their 10th straight home game over a non-conference foe.

Steffan Johnson scored 16 points to lead Pacific (3-9), which lost its eighth straight contest to a ranked opponent.

The Tigers were overwhelmed on the boards, 40-21, and saw the Badgers make 26-of-32 foul shots while they were just 6-of-11.

"It was a little of them and a little of us," Thomason said. "(Wisconsin) shot the ball extremely well, got a lot of balance from a lot of people and when you shoot that well and get to the free-throw line that much, it's pretty hard."