As silly as the numbers looked at halftime of his Sweet 16 game, Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan knew his team still had a chance against North Carolina State.

Zero assists. Zero 3-pointers. Eleven turnovers. Not surprisingly, No. 6-seeded Wisconsin trailed No. 10-seeded NC State, 30-21.

‘I’ve never looked at a stat sheet and seen numbers like that,’ Ryan said. ‘No. Never. (But) we hung around.’

Ryan knew that his team was capable of playing tough defense, making the nine-point lead a little less daunting. And he was dead right.

By the end of the game, they pulled it out. Wisconsin beat NC State last night, 65-56, in front of 30,713 in the Carrier Dome. The Badgers advanced to the Elite 8 for the first time since 2000, the year they made the Final Four. They will play the winner of No. 1-seeded North Carolina and No. 5-seeded Villanova.

Wisconsin (25-8) erased the nine-point halftime deficit by reverting to its normal, prodding style of offense. Ryan thought his team was playing a little too quick in the first half, so he urged it to slow down and trust its patented swing offense, a method, devised by Ryan, which favors ball control and hard cuts to the basket. The Badgers were led by Alando Tucker’s 22 points; 14 of which came in the second half.

While Wisconsin’s slow-paced style worked in the second half, the Badgers were able to limit NC State’s similar Princeton offense.

The Badgers frustrated the Wolfpack’s offensive star Julius Hodge, limiting him to 14 points on 4-of-16 shooting. Hodge entered the game averaging 17.1 points, the best on the team. After a while, Hodge became predictable: Drive left, bury a shoulder, shoot a runner. But the Badgers had him timed, cutting off his driving lane nearly every time.

After the game, Hodge assumed The Thinker’s pose in the postgame press conference, his eyes fixated on the table in front of him.

‘We played until our jerseys were soaked and our legs exhausted,’ Hodge said. ‘There’s no reason to let our heads hang.’

But there was, considering the Wolfpack (21-14) seemed to have a comfortable lead at halftime. But Wisconsin slashed away at NC State’s halftime lead quickly, tying the score at 34 only five minutes into the half. A Sharif Chambliss 3-pointer gave the Badgers a 39-37 lead, their first since the score was 7-5. And they systematically added to it.

While the Wolfpack suffered nearly seven minutes without a field goal in the second half, Wisconsin reeled off 15 points, extending its lead to 49-41. Hodge tried to almost single-handedly to lead a comeback. The 6-foot-7 forward carried the ball upcourt on almost every late NC State possession. He fired desperation 3s in the final minute. But every time his shots came up short, bouncing agonizingly off the rim.

Still, he seemed proud that his team, nearly written off after a 3-7 start to its conference season, reached the Sweet 16, a goal of the team since the beginning of the year.

‘(There were) good times, bad times,’ Hodge said. ‘But throughout it all, we were always together as a team.

‘The most challenging season we’ve had at NC State turns out to be the most rewarding.’

Published on March 25, 2005 at 12:00 pm