MADISON, Wis. -- Wisconsin's train of Big Ten basketball inevitability keeps rolling toward its final destination, and the opponent hardly even matters anymore. Throw the hottest league team in its path -- save for the Badgers, of course -- and UW merely swats it away like nothing more than a fruit fly.
That's essentially what transpired Sunday at the Kohl Center, where No. 5 Wisconsin pulled away for a 68-49 victory against an Illinois team that had won four straight contests. The game marked UW's eighth consecutive victory and fifth straight win by double figures. In the process, Wisconsin moved one more step closer to capturing its first Big Ten regular season championship since 2008.
Wisconsin (23-2, 11-1) leads every league team by at least three full games. Only three in the Big Ten are even that close: Maryland, Michigan State and Purdue. And it would require a catastrophic collapse the likes of which nobody can foresee to derail the Badgers' course to a league title with only six games remaining.
Afterward, Illinois coach John Groce outlined a five-point plan as to why the Illini (17-9, 7-6) lost to the Badgers, beginning with: "Obviously, they're really good." Every coach in the Big Ten likely could find some variation of the same sentiment.
Points 2-5 involved Wisconsin outrebounding Illinois 32-25 overall, UW winning the turnover battle, the Illini's top players not performing at a high enough level and, finally, the play of Badgers national player of the year candidate Frank Kaminsky.
"I think he's certainly one of the country's best players," Groce said, "and today he definitely played like it."
Kaminsky finished with 23 points and 11 rebounds, including 17 first-half points on 8-of-9 field goal shooting. But even when he went nearly 16 minutes without a point in the second half, Wisconsin's offensive efficiency did not skip a beat -- yet another reason this year's team is on a path toward its first No. 1 NCAA tournament seed in program history.
Bronson Koenig scored 15 points, Nigel Hayes added 14 and Sam Dekker scored 10. And the team's ability to share the ball can be backbreaking for opponents.
Take a possession in the second half, for example, when Dekker air-balled a 3, Hayes dove out of bounds into the camera bay to save the ball and tipped it to Josh Gasser, who passed to Koenig for a 3-pointer on the left wing to give Wisconsin a 40-26 lead.
"It just says that anybody can step up at any time," Kaminsky said. "Sam had a stretch, Bronson had a stretch where he was scoring. Nigel had some big buckets. It just goes to show that we can beat you in a lot of different ways."
Added Badgers coach Bo Ryan: "If Frank can bring people out with him and clear lane space and other guys can make back cuts or get in position to score from 10 feet and in, that's OK by us. Our guys really don't go out there and say, 'OK, let's make sure Frank gets his X number of points and then we'll go get ours.' We took what they gave us. It's all we ever do."
Illinois actually led briefly on three separate occasions, sparked by a stretch in which the Illini buried three 3-pointers in the span of 1 minute, 58 seconds. Rayvonte Rice's steal and dunk gave the Illini their last lead at 22-20 with 6:32 remaining.
And then, Wisconsin once again showed why it is so superior. Over the remainder of the half, the Badgers outscored the Illini 12-2 to take a 32-24 halftime lead. Before Illinois even knew what happened, Wisconsin led 37-24 -- the culmination of a 17-2 run -- on Nigel Hayes' 3-pointer with 18:56 left in the second half. Illinois was never closer than nine points the rest of the game.
In its three previous victories, Wisconsin had allowed opponents to dramatically slice into big leads: from 32 points to 12 against Indiana, from 22 points to 11 against Northwestern and from 17 points to five against Nebraska. But there was no such letdown against Illinois.
"Did we play better in the second half?" Dekker said sarcastically. "I thought we did OK. Maybe we don't have to talk about that as much."
Dekker was later asked if nitpicky questions relating to the team's second-half performance in double-digit victories spoke to just how well this team was performing.
"You guys have questions, but we also have questions within the locker room that we have to answer," he said. "We have goals that we've set. We're nowhere near where we want to be."
Perhaps. But Sunday's game demonstrated Wisconsin is a lot closer to achieving its goals that most teams in college basketball.
Ryan on Hall: On Saturday, Ryan was named one of 12 finalists to be considered for election in this year's Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame class. Joining Ryan as first-time finalists is 39-year NBA referee Dick Bavetta, two-time college coach of the year John Calipari, two-time NBA coach of the year Bill Fitch, all-time winningest boys high school coach Robert Hughes, eight-time NBA All-Star Dikembe Mutumbo, seven-time NBA All-Star Jo Jo White, the all-time winningest high school coach Leta Andrews and three-time WNBA MVP Lisa Leslie.
Previous finalists included again this year for consideration are five-time NBA all-star Tim Hardaway, four-time NBA all-star Spencer Haywood and three-time NBA All-Star Kevin Johnson.
Ryan became emotional when asked following Sunday's game what being elected would mean to him.
"It would be a thank you to all the people that I've either played for, played with, all the administrators at all the faculty at all the schools where I worked," Ryan said. "And the players obviously, some of the players have texted me or emailed me. They can't Facebook or tweeter me because I don't have it.
"I said thanks for making this possible to any of the players or coaches or people that have responded to that announcement. But hey, if that would put a smile on the face of the 12th man that I had at Brookhaven Junior High School, Sun Valley, Platteville, Milwaukee, Madison, I'd be pretty happy. I'd be real happy."
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