Hughes Leads Badgers to Historic Win

Trevon Hughes was a ball of smiles Wednesday night, bounding up and down off the Kohl Center floor like it was a hardwood trampoline.

If he seemed unusually light on his feet after the Badgers' 73-69 win over No. 6 Duke, he was. After all, getting a 10-year-old monkey off your back can do wonders for your vertical.

"It's a point of pride to know that we had something to do with [the Big Ten's Challenge victory] in a game a lot of people probably didn't think we were going to win," teammate Keaton Nankivil said. "It was pretty special."

And it was Hughes, who scored a team-high 26 points, who once again had the answers. When Nankivil asked if this was the Big Ten's first victory in the yearly series with the ACC, according to the AP, Hughes shot back, "Yeah, and the first time Duke lost."

Like everything else Wednesday night, Hughes was on target. For the first time in 11 years, the Big Ten claimed a Challenge victory, 6-5, though it would be Ohio State's drama-less thumping of Florida State a few hundred miles away, not the Badgers' euphoric victory that actually sealed the victory. And Duke, 10-0 before Wednesday night, left the court with long faces for the first time in series history.

So would many teams, after a Hughes' highlight reel that came in director's-cut length.

The elusive point guard sliced through the Duke defense when the Blue Devils tried to defend him, and stepped back to sink four 3-pointers when they didn't, part of a 40-percent effort from long range for the Badgers against the team that led the nation in field goal defense entering.

"Their offense just beat our defense," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said.

And the Badgers simply beat the Blue Devils, playing the tough and clinical basketball that has become a Wisconsin trademark while an outstanding scorer went to work -- Hughes this year, or Marcus Landry, Alando Tucker or Kammron Taylor in years past.

Just put it this way, you'll make more errors on your tax return than the Badgers did Wednesday night. Wisconsin committed just five turnovers while forcing 11 and played blueprint-precise defense.

But while Hughes led the team in highlights, the best move of the game belonged to coach Bo Ryan, who put redshirt freshman Ryan Evans on Duke junior Kyle Singler, after Tim Jarmusz struggled against the bigger Blue Devil in the first half. It was a heck of an endorsement from Evans, whom Ryan had unflatteringly described at the Big Ten media day as a player who "at times you don't know he's at practice, and other days he ... dominates." Ryan rewarded his coach's faith. He muscled Singler out of the lane, after the preseason All-American had driven in so easily to the basket in the first half. After scoring 17 points, mostly in the lane in the first half, Singler managed only 11 in the second and was far less effective getting into the paint.

On Duke's best chance to tie the game in the final minute, a play out of a timeout with 33 seconds left, it was Evans who blunted Singler's drive and forced the Duke star to misfire nto the bottom of the backboard.

For Duke, meanwhile, it was the sort of loss that Krzyzewski will use to shape his team. There were red flags, of course. The Blue Devils' thin rotation – Kyle Singler played 40 minutes, Jon Scheyer 39 and point guard Nolan Smith 37, and the trio took 41 of the teams' 53 shots – and nonexistent offensive production from the frontcourt could be season-long problems. So too, could be the zero fast break points Duke managed, a byproduct of a team built without a true point guard.

But it was an uncharacteristically poor defensive effort for a team that probably plays man-to-man defense in the lunch line that let the Blue Devils down.

Duke forced just five turnovers and made numerous defensive errors, like Smith's blown switch on an out-of-bounds play with 6:50 remaining. Smith dropped down on Evans, who was already being defended by Singler, hardly the sort of play you'd expect out a pair that have been teammates for three seasons. Hughes was left unguarded for a 3-pointer that turned a five-point edge into an eight-point advantage and set the tone for the not-quite-enough rallies Duke would make later.

If there's a silver lining for Duke, beyond the loss coming early in the year, it was freshman Andre Dawkins, who hit three consecutive 3-pointers to rally the Blue Devils from a late nine-point deficit to a two-point disadvantage in the final minute. Meanwhile, fellow freshman Mason Plumlee played his first minutes of the season, and, though the cobwebs were all but visible on his uniform, looked like a mature enough specimen to develop into a legitimate post player.

But, like the rest of the night -- at least outside of Clemson's mammoth collapse against Illinois -- the narrative wasn't an ACC loss but a Big Ten victory. Whether or not the Badgers are the best team in the Big Ten or will improve as much as other younger teams in the nation – Ryan's club returned seven of its top nine scorers from a season ago and starts all seniors and juniors – is a question for later in the season.

Wednesday night, the Badgers, a team, bafflingly, in retrospect, picked to finish ninth in the league, only had answers. Wisconsin has become one of the nation's best stories with wins over Duke, Maryland and Arizona. But if they're a surprise, it's only because we've paid little attention to recent history. Ryan has never failed to get a team to the NCAA tournament, and, barring a spate of injuries, seems like a safe bet to continue that trend.

But this night, the Badgers not only reminded us how good they always are, they served as a reminder of how good the league is, even in the years it came up short in the Challenge.

Overall, the narrow victory meant more or less what the same narrow losses meant in previous years – this was the 11th meeting of the two conferences and the sixth time it's been decided by a single game. In a sport with wall-to-wall parity, the Big Ten and ACC are, once again, on equal footing.

Even the Challenge's big winners are quick to play defense about what a win means.

"It's still early, early in the season," said North Carolina coach Roy Williams, whose Tar Heels knocked off Michigan State in the event's marquee game Tuesday night. "We're not going to make too much of this game. It's one game. It's a big win. We're going to love it until midnight, then we'll start thinking about the next game we play."

But if it didn't mean everything, the Big Ten's win at least meant something. It was reason to say farewell to one heck of an overgrown monkey, a reason to thump their chest, a reason to be known as something other than the three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust basketball.

And in Madison, it was reason to smile.