MILWAUKEE — After briefly accelerating toward the rim with a lengthy stride, giving the fans, players and pearl-clutchers something to imagine (and to be sure, up 10 points on Texas, a vicious breakaway dunk just might have been unnecessary), Jaden Ivey and his better angels dribbled out the clock instead. He glanced over at a raucous Purdue team with a grin as time expired: His highlight reel needed no last-minute insertions.
On the other end of the same Fiserv Forum court some two-plus hours earlier, Ivey’s Wisconsin counterpart, Johnny Davis, took a minute to compose himself before joining the handshake line, his chin nestled in his left palm as he soaked in the moment. An exceedingly friendly and well-oiled crowd in the stands looked on in disbelief, as their Badgers had not been as fortunate. In a mucky contest marred by an ankle injury to dependable point guard Chucky Hepburn, Wisconsin fell to Iowa State by five, grasping for answers off the bench with a permanent wrench in a creaky offensive attack.
There was a degree of cosmic synchronicity to Sunday night’s events, as the Big Ten’s torch-bearing teams and two highest seeds, led by their must-see, NBA-bound sophomore guards, made disparate exits from Milwaukee. Purdue went on its way to San Antonio with tangible Final Four dreams, and Wisconsin, the regular season co-champion, hopped a short bus ride back to Madison. This concluded an uneven weekend for the league on whole: Of the Big Ten’s nine teams that cracked the tournament’s field of 68, just two remained in the dance-off. No. 11 seed Michigan swung upsets over Colorado State and Tennessee, and the Boilermakers held their seed against Texas and Yale. Prior to Wisconsin’s heartbreak, earlier in the day, Illinois (the other co-champion), Ohio State and Michigan State had also fallen, joining Iowa (the conference tourney champ), Indiana and Rutgers among the vanquished.
