Just a few days after half the Minnesota basketball program left the team to pursue their amateur film careers, the Badgers went into The Barn and got a 62-49 win against Richard Pitino’s undermanned roster. Bronson led the way once again with 14 on an efficient 5-7 shooting night, and he also dished out 6 assists. He’s struggled at times this year, but if he can find the game he was playing last season for the next month, Wisconsin becomes a much more dangerous team.

Vitto Brown and Ethan Happ also threw in 12 apiece, on a night when Nigel just couldn’t get anything going offensively – He scored 1 bucket from the field and finished with 6, but he did grab 7 boards. Khalil Iverson gave good minutes off the bench again, going 3-4 for 6 points and another double clutch dunk…

Jordan Hill contributed with a couple nice moves as well, finishing with 4 points in 14 minutes.

Minnesota has obviously struggled this year and they were one of the worst teams in the Big Ten even before suspending 3 starters, but it’s still never easy for the Badgers to go there and win. No matter what the gap is between those two teams, it always seems to be a close game down the stretch – But this one was never in doubt, so good on Greg Gard & Co. to take care of business in a tough place to play.

The last game on the regular season schedule is Sunday at #15 Purdue, who beat us by 6 at the Kohl Center right before the New Year because we couldn’t stop AJ Hammons. He’s a monster down low who we’ll have to contain if we’re gonna win that game, but if we can find a way to pull that out, somehow we’ll be looking at the #2 seed in the Big Ten Tournament in a season that looked like it could be a total wash not that long ago.