Brad Davison Has Officially Become The Villain Of College Hoops With A Nut Punch In Loss To Marquette

We finally did it. We finally found our villain and it was the heavy favorite. There’s no doubt that Brad Davison was ready to be the villain in college hoops with Grayson Allen moving on to Utah. Everyone knows all about the charges and flops. But, that’s not enough. We needed a play to really define him as the villain.

This is exactly what happened. It was the perfect storm. Davison struggling in the game – going 0-for-3 from the FT line, which was shocking considering he’s a 90% FT shooter. You had the rivalry game with Marquette. You had the game in overtime and Wisconsin losing at the time. It was perfectly executed.

I’d be willing to argue that Davison is the best teammate for this. Instead of talking about how no one else besides Happ could consistently get a bucket in this game, everyone will be talking about Davison’s play. That’s been the thing with Wisconsin this year. Part of the reason as to why they had to come back in their 3 previous games is finding consistent scoring outside of Happ and Trice.

If we want to talk seriously about Marquette – this was huge. They are coming off the win against Kansas State and had to get another quality win. Markus Howard did not play well. I know people will look at the 27 points, but he took 29 shots. He made some bad mistakes – including a lazy pass that Happ stole for an and-1 and gave Wisconsin the lead late in the game. But, this is what Marquette can do. They still have the Hauser brothers and I thought Joey was huge tonight. They have these other options that they can go to when Howard is struggling. We saw Wojo draw up a play for Joey Hauser, where it was essentially a flare screen pop and attention went to Howard – it led to an open corner three.

The real difference though was Ed Morrow. Yes, his box score numbers aren’t that impressive. But, late in the game he was able to come in and at least give Happ a different look and more importantly grabbed a bunch of key rebounds. Before the season started I discussed Marquette’s defense. It’s been beyond putrid the last few years. All it had to be was average this year and you’d see a jump. They are now a top-50 defense – that’s because of guys like Morrow. If that stays at top-50 you’re looking at a team that can challenge a Big East title.