NFL
By: Melo Williams
The Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team lost 84-83 to the Oklahoma Sooners in a preseason exhibition game at the Bad Boy Mowers Exhibition on Friday at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.
Junior John Blackwell scored a game-high 20 points, adding five rebounds and three assists. Blackwell scored the game’s first bucket on a jump-stop fadeaway jumper inside the paint.
Portland transfer Austin Rapp played well on both ends of the court finishing with 17 points on 6-of-11 shooting, six rebounds, three assists, and three steals.
The 6-foot-10 big-man drilled three deep-balls as well providing Wisconsin with valuable scoring inside and outside stretching thedefens. In ’24-25 Rapp led the country in three-pointers made for a player 6-foot-10 or taller.
Oklahoma led 46-41 into the halftime break.
In the second half, the Badgers went on three come-from-behind runs getting the game within one.
Transfer Nick Boyd consistently found himself sparking the Badgers runs dropping 12 second-half points. He finished with 19 points, six rebounds and three assists.
Junior Nolan Winter finished with 10 points all coming within the paint, five rebounds, and one block.
True freshman Aleksas Bieliauskas made his UW debut, playing 13 minutes tallying six points behind two three-pointers.
Virginia transfer, Andrew Rohde finished with five points, four assists, and three steals.
Defensively, Wisconsin struggled overall allowing Oklahoma to shoot over 51% from the field.
Xzayvier Brown led the Sooners with 18 points and added 4 rebounds and 5 assists.
Nijel Pack scored 15 points, all in the second half, including the late basket that sealed the win.
Derrion Reid chipped in 14 points for the Sooners.
However, the Badgers on-ball defense was stifling forcing the Sooners into 16 turnovers, two shy of their 2024-25 season high, when they forced Appalachian State into 18 turnovers in an early-season matchup.
From the 16 turnovers, Wisconsin scored 21 points off the turnovers.
Wisconsin also recorded 10 steals as a team. Austin Rapp and Andrew Rohde led the Badgers with three steals apiece.
The Badgers scored well in the paint outscoring the Sooners 36-26, up five points higher than their 31.0 average from last season.
The Badgers was outrebounded 36-33 but outscored the Sooners 14-10 with 2nd chance points.
The biggest difference was bench points. Wisconsin bench only provided 12 points to Oklahoma 25 points.
Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard said “I think this is why we want to do these things, to get into this environment and to play against this type of team, and get a lot of things exposed. Areas that you can’t maybe learn about as in depth during practice, and to be able to come in and do this and see a team that can challenge you in different ways, I think this is great for us.”
As a preseason exhibition, the game does not affect either team’s official record but provided a valuable evaluation for Wisconsin’s coaching staff.
Wisconsin will take on UW-Platteville in the ninth-annual Garding against Cancer game on Wednesday, Oct. 29 at the Kohl Center. Tip for the Badgers’ final exhibition is set for 7 p.m. and tickets are available on UWBadgers.com.
