Badgers season ends in thud, as North Texas holds them scoreless for final 9:07

A thud to end the season for the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team.

The Badgers went scoreless for the final 9 minutes, 7 seconds of their season in losing to North Texas 56-54 in the NIT semifinals on Tuesday.

Down two for the final 2:08 seconds of the game, Tyler Wahl missed a pair of free throws with 49.1 seconds left, had the tying shot blocked by the rim with 10 seconds left and then the senior lost the ball on the final play with 5.8 second to go, ending the season.

Wisconsin (20-15), up 41-29 at halftime, scored 13 points in the second half — of course, all those coming in the first 10:53 because the Badgers didn’t score after a Connor Essegian 3-pointer.

Wisconsin made just one of its last 16 shots and missed 10 consecutive times in that stretch. Granted, North Texas (30-7) is the nation’s leader in scoring defense (55.7 points per game).

La Crosse native Jordan Davis played 11 minutes but didn’t take a shot. He had four rebounds, an assist and a turnover.

The 6-foot-4 junior guard finished the season starting 18 of 35 games, averaging 5.1 points, 3.5 rebounds. He shot 39.9% from the field and 30.8 from beyond the arc.

Davis started the season strong, scoring 13 and 11 points in back-to-back games against Stanford and UW-Green Bay in Wisconsin’s second and third games.

But he lost his starting job to begin January and playing slowly dwindled thereafter.

He had a career-high 15 points at Northwestern, and scored 14 points twice this season but those were all five of the games he scored in double figures.