“They have a lot of athletes on that team, and they like to get up and down,” Taylor said. “I think the first two times that we played them, we kind of controlled that, and we let it get away from us. Today, we allowed them to get out and get on a break, and it caught up with us.”

The Badgers were unable to sustain a run.

Down 34-23 early in the second half, Wisconsin scored six straight. Taylor’s pull-up jumper drew a loud reaction from the large contingent of Badgers fans, and the volume increased when Marcus Landry dunked in transition to cut it to 34-29. Ohio State called time, and the Wisconsin faithful chanted, “Let’s go red!”

Instead, they stalled.

There were no late runs, no theatrics, unlike the first two meetings between these teams. Wisconsin hung on for a 72-69 victory Jan. 9 in Madison as Butler missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer. The Buckeyes returned the favor Feb. 25 in Columbus, winning on Conley’s runner in the lane with 4 seconds left to clinch their second straight regular-season conference title.

This time, Wisconsin was fortunate to stay within striking range until the latter stages.

“I think what happened was the quickness of Conley with the ball and Oden being such a presence inside, there’s two pretty big factors of why things turned out the way they did,” coach Bo Ryan said.

The Badgers trailed 26-20 at halftime, but it could have been much worse considering they went seven minutes without a point early, hit just nine of 27 shots, and committed 12 turnovers.

It helped that Oden spent most of the half on the sideline and did not attempt a shot.

After averaging 19.5 points and 13.5 points in the first two tournament games, he got called for a charge just over a minute into this one and went to the sideline about three minutes later after hitting the floor while going for an offensive rebound. He re-entered the game midway through the half, but spent the final 7:03 on the sideline after picking up his second foul.

It was a tough half for someone who has drawn comparisons to some of the game’s great centers.

“I’m just a college player, just playing and making my team win,” Oden said. “You really can’t compare me to any of those guys.”

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