It was a wild ending to a huge victory for the Wisconsin Badgers on Sunday. After closing out a 77-63 victory over the Michigan Wolverines, the two sides got into a huge brawl in the postgame handshake line, instigated by Michigan head coach Juwan Howard.
After Wisconsin pulled their starters, Michigan continued a full court press down by 15 points in the final minute of the game. With 15 seconds left, after a ball out of bounds off Michigan, Wisconsin called a timeout, which irked Juwan Howard. Greg Gard said he took the timeout to get a full 10 second count to get across the half-court line. If he didn't, they would only have had four seconds to do so.
In the postgame handshake line, Howard told Gard "I'll remember that!" and pointed at him, when Gard tried to explain himself, Howard got more upset and wasn't interested in talking, then punches were thrown first by Howard and other Michigan players.
In his postgame press conference, Howard did not apologize for his actions.
During the game, it was close throughout the first half, going into halftime tied at 31. At halftime, the Badgers honored Michael Finley in a ceremony retiring his #24 and hanging it up in the rafters.
Johnny Davis took over in the second half, scoring nine straight points for Wisconsin in one stretch and 17 of his 25 points came in the second half. The Badgers extended their lead, going on an 18-3 run at one point.
All five of the Badgers starters had double digit points. Tyler Wahl, Chucky Hepburn, and Brad Davison each had 10 points, Steven Crowl had 11, and Johnny Davis once again led the way with 25 points.
It was a tough 3 point shooting day for both sides, with Wisconsin making just 4 of 13 from beyond the arc and Michigan shooting 4 of 25 from 3.
The Badgers move to 21-5 on the regular season and 12-4 in Big Ten play, moving into a three-way tie for first in the conference standings with Illinois and Purdue.
Next up for Wisconsin are a pair of road games, traveling to Minnesota on Wednesday, February 23rd, and traveling to red hot Rutgers on Saturday, February 26th.