Wisconsin Takes Xavier Down For A Rare Cintas Center Loss

The Xavier Musketeers and Wisconsin Badgers met for the seventh time since 1938 at the Cintas Center Tuesday night.

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The teams were 3-3 all time but Wisconsin took a lead in the competitive series.

D'Mitrik Trice scored 22 points and Ethan Happ 30 to lead Wisconsin to a win over the Musketeers, 77-68.  The performances helped the Badgers end Xavier' streak of 41 straight non-conference wins at the Cintas Center.

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The teams split the last two with Xavier winning in Madison, Wisconsin, 80-70 last season.  Wisconsin broke Xavier's heart in the 2016 NCAA second round game when the Badgers overcame a nine point deficit with six minutes left to eliminate the Musketeers, 66-63 on a last second 3-point shot.

Xavier put together a 12-4 run to over the last 4:38 to close the halftime gap to two points at 3-0-28. Naji Marshall's last second drive to the basket produced the halftime margin.

Wisconsin (2-0) stormed out of the locker room in the second half to build an 18 point lead with 6:00 minutes left.  Xavier was able to cut the lead to nine points  with 2:26 left but a 3-point shot by Brad Davison, which gave him 19 points with 53 seconds gave the Badgers a commanding lead down the stretch.

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All Xavier (2-1) could do was foul at the end. Although Marshall sank a 3-point shot with 30 seconds left.

Marshall led Xavier with 24 points. Quentin Goodin scored 13 for the Musketeers.

Trice, who is from Huber Heights, Ohio and played basketball and football at Wayne, is healthy after a foot injury last season.   and He missed the last 23 games of the season.  The Badgers were 11-12 without Trice.

This means every thing to come back here with 25 plus people to see me," Trice said.  "Coming back to Ohio, an hour away from where I'm from, is just amazing."

His presence provides a powerful inside out game with Happ which was devastating to the Musketeers.

"It is good to have everybody healthy right now," Trice said.  "We're down Aleem (Ford) right now but when we get him back in the next few weeks, we're going to be even more dangerous than we are right now.  I think that we have a lot of weapons and a lot of people are playing with confidence.  That's a great thing to go into the season."

Trice was 5-for-5 from three point range and fed Happ and Davison with five assists.  The Badgers made nine of 16 three point shots as a team.  Xavier was just -5-for-24 from outside the arc.

 "We just lost focus on the defensive end, lost our intensity," Marshall said. "That's kind of been our deal since the season started. We've got to lock in and play the whole game. We've got to grow as a team. You can see Wisconsin down the stretch, they executed and we fell asleep on defense."

Marshall gave Wisconsin credit for shutting down a Xavier team that lost its top three scorers to graduation.

"It's not like they were forcing us to take those shots," Marshall said. "We've got to mature as a whole group and get better shots."

Wisconsin outrebounded the Musketeers 40-32 and 12-9 on the offensive end.

Xavier will host Houston Baptist at 7:00 on Saturday before taking on Stanford in Hawii.