The second upset of the day in the 2011 Big Ten Tournament happened just after the first one, giving us a highly improbable semifinal match-up tomorrow night.
The Penn State Nittany Lions, who may or may not still have NCAA Tournament aspirations, certainly played as though they did tonight, defeating the Wisconsin Badgers in what can charitably be labeled a snoozefest, 36-33.
If you'll recall, in the tournament's first game, Northwestern guard Michael Thompson set a new record by scoring 35 points. . .by himself. I would have to believe that Wisconsin's 33-point performance is the fewest points scored in a game in the history of the Big Ten Tournament.
Penn State actually got off to a pretty hot start, scoring 14 points in the game's first seven and a half minutes. . .then Wisconsin got their first bucket of the evening. The halftime score was 20-16 in favor of Penn State, so the teams combined for 36 points in the first half of play, and 33 in the second half.
Nobody from Penn State scored in double digits, as Talor Battle led the way with nine. Tim Frazier had eight, and David Jackson had seven. For Wisconsin, 26 of their 33 points were scored by Jordan Taylor, who had 16, and Jon Leuer, who had ten.
As you would expect, both teams were awful from the field, but Wisconsin was particularly bad from three-point range, hitting only two of 21 long-range shots. The Badgers shot 29.4% for the game, while Penn State shot 33.3% for the evening.
Penn State will now move on to take the evening's other upset winner, the Michigan State Spartans, in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals tomorrow night at Conseco Fieldhouse. Wisconsin is done, and they'll have to wait until Sunday to see exactly how much damage they did to their seeding with this performance.
Thanks for following all of our coverage here at SB Nation Minnesota. Look around the site a little bit, because there's been a whole lot of action taking place while this Big Ten Tournament has been going on.