2007 NCAA MEN S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP FIRST AND SECOND ROUNDS

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1 BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP Wisconsin 76, TAMUCC 63 Game Two March 16, 2007 United Center Chicago, Ill. #2 Wisconsin (30-5) 1-0, #15 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (26-7) 0-1 GAME NOTES Wisconsin scored a season-low 19 points in the first half. It shot 6-29 for 20.7% The Badgers' previous first-half low was 20 points against Ohio State in the Big Ten Tournament championship game on March 11, The Badgers' nine-point halftime deficit was their second-largest of the season. UW trailed Missouri State by 13 (45-32), eventually losing The Badgers shot 61.5% (16-26) in the second half of today's game vs. TAMUCC. Wisconsin has trailed at the half in 13 of its 28 NCAA Tournament games. The Badgers are now 7-6 when trailing at the half in an NCAA Tournament game. Wisconsin's Kammron Taylor (24 pts) and Alando Tucker (23 pts) became just the third pair of Badger players to score 20 or more points in a NCAA Tournament game. Taylor's 24 points ranks fourth on Wisconsin's all-time NCAA singlegame scoring list, while Tucker's 23 points ties for fifth place on that ledger. Wisconsin improved its record to 8-0 under Coach Bo Ryan against lower-seeded teams in the NCAA Tournament. Overall, Ryan is 8-5 in Tournament games. TAMUCC held the lead for the first 30:24 of the game. Wisconsin took a lead with 9:36 left in the game and never relinquished it. TAMUCC's largest lead of the ballgame was 18 points with 5:29 left in the first half. Wisconsin used a run over a span of 15:53 to take its first lead, hitting 14 of 22 from the field ( pointers) and eight of eight free throws during that time span. Wisconsin improved its record to 30-5, becoming only the 13th team in Big Ten Conference history to win at least 30 games. The Badgers improved their all-time NCAA win-loss record to 17-11, including a mark of 8-5 in first-round games. TAMUCC finishes the season 26-7 and falls to 0-4 against the Big Ten Conference. Its 26 wins is a single-season school record for TAMUCC. The Islanders have played five games in the state of Illinois all-time and have yet to win one. Wisconsin halted the Islanders' six-game winning streak. Coming into today's game, TAMUCC was ranked second in the NCAA shooting 52.4%. Wisconsin held the Islanders to 43.5% (20-46), their fourth-lowest output of the season. TAMUCC started the game from the free throw line. However, the Islanders closed out the game 6-14 from the free throw line and were for the game. Including a 4-0 sweep by the No. 2-seeded teams against the No. 15-seeded teams in 2007, the No. 2's now lead by an 88-4 margin all-time in NCAA Tournament history. Wisconsin's Alando Tucker scored 23 points vs. TAMUCC, boosting his school record to 2,200 career points. Today, Tucker passed Indiana's Don Schlundt (2,192 points from ) to move into ninth place on the Big Ten's all-time career scoring list. He needs 22 points to tie Michigan's Gary Grant (2,222 from ) for eighth place on the list. No. 2 Wisconsin advances to the second round and faces No. 7 UNLV. The Rebels hold a 2-0 all-time series advantage with both games being played in Las Vegas. The two teams have never faced each other in the NCAA Tournament. Wisconsin is 3-3 in second round games, while UNLV is 6-2 since the NCAA went to a 64-team format. Session One Attendance: 18,237

2 March 16, 2007 United Center Chicago, Ill. WISCONSIN COACH QUOTES Head Coach Bo Ryan: Opening Statement: I m just glad when they set this game up they set it up in two halves and it was 40 minutes. They won the first 15 minutes very handily and we won the next 25. It s nice to be on this end. It just took a little while. They were executing to a tee. Some things they were doing offensively and defensively, we weren t but we did some things to counter that. It s amazing when shots go down how things can change momentum, confidence, all those things. Kam s (Kammron Taylor) ability to get us in that run offensively and seeing other guys contributing also obviously turned the game around. On tough starts in opening-round games of the tournament: I think offensively if you are able to knock a couple shots down early, it makes all the difference. I ve watched enough of these games on television and I have seen higher seed teams that just jump out by 15 early, next thing you know, it is a two-point game. I think in these tournament games, basketball has become a game of runs. All we needed to do was hit a couple shots early. Kam had some good looks. We had the ball in the paint a couple of times and thought we were going to come out with some free throws, you don t so you just got to go play, and go back and try it again. I think if early we could have drawn a couple of fouls, it would have made all the difference in the world. We just didn t have it going. But how many teams could withstand that and still come back and do what our kids did. I don t think there are a whole lot of them out there. On Jason Bohannon s performance: His performance was a big lift. He is a gamer and he will shoot better. There were some open looks and he is good shooter. You got guys that you know that can shoot. He missed some early and then he hit a couple there, two out of three in that stretch. Kam started hitting his and then the basket opened up. That s why I think in those first five minutes, if we get a couple of fouls, we get to the line and we get a couple buckets, it s a different story. On their defensive performance: Don t ever overlook defensively what we did in the game. Our guys earned the right to have a chance in the second half. If we go down 15 or 18 heading into the locker room, it might be a little different. Defensively, I thought we did a real good job of helping one another out and not letting Daniels get too many dunks. He got some in the first half, but we made them work for everything.

3 March 15, 2007 United Center Chicago, Ill. WISCONSIN STUDENT-ATHLETE QUOTES Kammron Taylor On Taylor and Tucker talking about being the team leaders: We talked about it before the game the week heading into this. Us being seniors, two of the leaders on the team, this is not the way we wanted to go out, the way we were playing in the first half. Tuck was doing all he could, and he needed some help. I can t lose confidence in myself, even when things aren t going my way, because then I m going to hurt the team. On taking over the game when Tucker went to the bench midway through the second half: It s one of those rare moments. I hit my first shot of the game, and everything felt good from there. Tuck was basically the only person scoring for us and somebody else had to step up. Like I said, me being one of the leaders on the team I had to, and when the first shot fell down it felt good after that. Alando Tucker On what Wisconsin can take from the game moving forward: We played bad in the first half, probably as bad as we have all together as a unit. So it can t get worse. From the momentum that we have, from the last five minutes of the first half to the second half, how we pressured the ball, played post D, that s what we have to take into the game, all 40 minutes. Like coach said, we played 25 good minutes hard, and that s when we came back. We have to put that together and channel that energy and play 40. Greg Stiemsma On Wisconsin s perseverance: We just kept playing our game, never backing down, never giving up on the plays. We just kept shooting the shots that were there, and we had some open looks that we weren t hitting in the first half. On the time when he felt Wisconsin was back in the game: I don t know, maybe when the horn went off at the end. The game went with tournament style; you never know what s going to happen until the end. We re just happy when the game s over and it s in the books. Michael Flowers On Kammron Taylor s 14-point run: It s about time. He should have been doing that in the first half! His shots just weren t falling in the first half. On the impact of Tucker s dunk to end the first half: Yeah I think it [helped us]. It let the other team know we weren t going away and that we were here for a reason. Jason Chappell On Wisconsin s ability to come back in a game: You can t keep digging holes for yourself and expect to get out of them every time. Sooner or later it s going to come back and bite you. We definitely have to get out to a better start on Sunday. On Kammron Taylor s 14-point run: It was great. He s one of our main guys, and anytime he can get hot like that it s big for us. They weren t falling on the first half, but he kept taking them in the first half.

4 March 15, 2007 United Center Chicago, Ill. TEXAS A&M CORPUS CHRISTI COACH QUOTES Head Coach Ronnie Arrow: Opening Statement: I wish the game would ve been over at halftime. I think they really came out the second half and played well. As good as we played defensively the first half, the second half we gave up 57 points. You re not going to beat too many people doing that. We just didn t get near enough stops like we did the first half. Bo is a very physical coach, he gets his guys to play very hard and you just can t let up. You can t let up on a team like that. Once you get them down, you ve got to for the jugular vein because he s going to have them coming back at you. We just didn t finish it. I think it s a great, great learning deal for us. But naturally, we wish we would ve been on the other end of it. On the play of the team and the overall experience: We came in at halftime and we didn t think we played very good the first half. Our statement to the guys was the fans think we re really playing good, that we played really good. They still didn t get to see how we can really play. And then the second half, they really didn t get to see us play. The proper perspective for this is that we ve come a long period in a short period of time. We wanted to come here and prove that not only our program, but the Southland Conference, we wanted to represent everybody. I think we did to a certain extent, and now we ve got to get back to work and get back here again. The ride has been nice, but we truly felt like that when it s all said and done this year, we won 26 games, which is a heck of a year. But the bottom line is, we truly felt we could and should have won this game. On the seven seniors on the team and the Southland Conference: These guys have been super. These guys have been here four and five years. They put a lot of hard work in and they ve done a lot for this program, for the university, for the town. We ve had a lot of wins. We ve had a lot of fun. Right now, we don t feel very good, but when you look back to what these young men have done for this program, it speaks for itself. There s work to be done. It s a work in progress and we re looking forward to going back and we ve got to rejuvenate and go get some fillers for seven seniors and we look forward to getting back and representing the Southland Conference again. Tom Burnett s here, our commissioner of the Southland Conference, and I ll tell you thanks for letting us in, especially for letting us in with seven seniors. Northwestern (State) came last year and beat Iowa. We truly thought we could do it this year but we ll go back to the drawing board and come back another time. On UNLV and its second round match-up against Wisconsin: Our guys wanted to play Vegas again. We played Vegas in their tournament and they beat us by 10. Two minutes or three minutes to go, we were down three and missed a wide open three. So, our guys really wanted to play Vegas on a neutral site. We felt like there were some crazy calls that went their way. I think when it s all said and done, I think Vegas will win the game. How much, I don t know that. But the bottom line is, I think Vegas will win the game. It doesn t have anything to do with the way Wisconsin played tonight. I just think that for what Vegas does, they ll be used to more than what we were as far as the pounding. They ve got guys that will explode in there more often than we did.

5 March 16, 2007 United Center Chicago, Ill. TEXAS A&M-CORPUS CHRISTI PLAYER QUOTES Taurean Mitchell: On the first half run: I felt if we kept running the ball we could boost the lead and keep pushing it and pushing it and scoring in transition, we could have a good chance of winning this game. We figured that if we slowed the ball down and just pounded it in and just wear it down, we could win. We didn t do too much of that in the second half. We did in the first half, but not the second half. On the tournament experience: The ride s been pretty good. It s just too sad that it had to end today. I heard that everyone had us picked to upset today. I felt it this first half, I thought that we could do this. We went to locker room, we discussed what we had to discuss and we just let up at the end. We missed big free throws, and they executed. (Kammron) Taylor went into a zone and scored several straight and we had no answer for that. The ride has been good and I love all of these guys in this program. I ve been here four years. If I could do it again, I d do it again with these guys. Chris Daniels: On why the team didn t attack inside more in the second half: I really don t know. I guess I could have tried a lot harder, made more moves to the basket, tried to get more contact. I don t know. On the second half: I wouldn t say that we were messing up more. We had a few costly turnovers that kind of hurt us towards the end of the half. (Alando) Tucker getting the huge dunk towards the end of the half to cut the lead to single digits. I wouldn t say it had anything to do with what they did; it had more to do with what we did, not taking care of the ball in crucial situations. We needed to come up with more offensive rebounds, because we re a better offensive rebounding team than that, all around. It was a good game halfway through the game, but with about seven minutes to go. I hate to say the better team won, because they re a great team, I don t want to take anything away from them, but at the same time, we re a great team too. We just had some loose ends we didn t tie up. Josh Ervin: On Chris Daniels attack: It s not that he stopped attacking. As far as the guards, we weren t able to get him the ball as much as we were in the first half. He can t attack if he doesn t have the ball. That was mainly our fault. On their NCAA Tournament appearance: It s been a great experience. I appreciate the whole deal. I appreciate all my guys for leading us here. Up to this point it s been really great. I appreciate these guys for getting us here.

6 Seth Engelken On the team s hot start: We felt like if we came out with a lot of energy, pushed the ball and hit shots, we could get off to a good start and we did. We worked a lot on making shots in transition in practice and we did that early. On the team s defensive strategy: Alando Tucker is a great player and we wanted to keep the ball out of his hands. We wanted to do everything we could to take away open shots and, even though they got a couple more open looks than we would have liked in the first half, they weren t going in. But keeping the ball out of Tucker s hands and getting clean rebounds so we could get transition opportunities were the key. On what making the NCAA Tournament means to the program: It s a huge thing for our program. Just by being here for the first time means so much. It probably won t sink in for a couple of weeks. We feel like we had it and that it was so close and we let it slip away. Cedric Smith On opening a big, first-half lead: We wanted to just come out and play our game and push the ball. Coach said that they were more of a slowdown team and we were able to be effective pushing the ball in the first 15 minutes. On defending Alando Tucker: I was fronting him and trying to keep the ball out of his hands. When he did get it, I tried to stay in front of him and be a big target for him to go around or shoot over. On what making the NCAA Tournament means to the program: It means everything. It is a huge compliment to the program. We did something special this year, we made the Big Dance.