He knew as soon as he put up the shot that it was going to go down. It did and Sam Dekker turned around with a little smile on his face knowing that that three pointer was the dagger that would send the Wisconsin Badgers back to the Final Four for the second straight year, defeating the Arizona Wildcats again, this time by a score of 85-78 in downtown Los Angeles.

The first twenty minutes of this Elite Eight game between the two foes who met in last season’s Elite Eight was a chess match. Wisconsin started out the hotter of the two teams, making their first seven points inside from either charity stripe or inside the paint. After Josh Gasser made a three pointer that put the Badgers up 10-2 early in the first half. Brandon Ashley picked up a couple of early fouls which made it much more difficult to for Arizona to run their offense.

When he came back into the game after a couple of minutes on the bench, he scored the next six points for the Wildcats, tying the game up at 14. Wisconsin and Arizona were exchange shots, going toe-for-toe. Frank Kaminsky made a jumper with 4:38 left to go in the half to put the Badgers up 22-24 but then Gabe York answered straight away and gave his school a one point lead. Kaleb Tarczewski made a couple of free throws with a little over a minute to go in the half to put the Wildcats up by four. The half ended with a couple of attempts from the stripe to cut Arizona’s lead to 33-30 – the exact same score as last year.

Wisconsin shot lights out to start the second half starting with a three ball from the big man, Frank Kaminsky which tied the game. Sam Dekker got in the action next and hit a three pointer of his own, putting his school up by two. Their hot shooting from deep continued throughout the half as Dekker kept making shot after shot after shot from beyond the three point line. There was not much Arizona could do about that as the Wildcats’ offense was not really clicking on all cylinders. One thing that was working was the fact that Sean Miller’s squad got to the line often and made their free throw attempts. But it just wasn’t enough as Miller would be denied a spot in the Final Four again and will have to reload for next season.

Sam Dekker and Frank Kaminsky combined to score for an astonishing 56 points on 17-31 shooting. Dekker was red hot from beyond the three point arc making 5 out of 6 attempts while Kaminsky was lights out at the charity stripe missing just twice out of 12 tries. As a team, Wisconsin was ridiculous from beyond the arc making 12-18, good for 66.7%. This stretched Arizona’s defense knowing that they had to guard the perimeter. However, Bo Ryan knew that this would happen and used Kaminsky down low to go to work on Kaleb Tarczewski and the junior from New Hampshire could not buy a stop around the rim.

For the Wildcats, Brandon Ashley and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson tied for the team lead with 17 points each. Hollis-Jefferson made 6-12 from the field and 5-6 from the line, but was also able to get eight rebounds, seven on the defensive glass. Ashley, on the other hand, managed his own game very well playing with four fouls for most of the second half and continued to attack the basket making 5 of his 8 attempts from the field. This was T.J. McConnell’s last game as an Arizona Wildcat and he put up a terrific performance, playing stout defense while putting up 14 points, which was second most on the team. He will go down as one of the greatest ever to put on the Wildcat jersey for the way he controlled himself and the team.

The Badgers of Wisconsin still have more basketball left to play this season and will head to Indianapolis to take on the winner of the Kentucky Wildcats/Notre Dame Fighting Irish game.

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