Wisconsin's kammron taylor, center, celebrates with teammate Tanner Bronson, left, during the Badgers' game with Minnesota. Wisconsin won, 75-62, in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis ? Watching brutal offense is nothing new for Wisconsin basketball fans. They watched it all the way to the Final Four with Dick Bennett’s team in 2000.

The Badgers came into Williams Arena on Wednesday night as the No. 3-rated team in the country. They were Bennettesque in the first half, making eight of 28 field-goal attempts and squeezing out a 28-24 halftime lead against the woeful Gophers.

“I give some credit to the Gophers’ defense,” guard Kammron Taylor said. “They did a good job of taking away our shooters. We didn’t really force anything. It’s just when we did get our looks, we didn’t make anything.”

Then the Badgers turned things around. They went from shooting 28.6 percent in the first half to 15-for-27 and 55.6 percent in the second half. They went 20 minutes finding no space against the Gophers’ collapsing man-to-man defense, and then had all the space they needed in the next 20 minutes.

“The biggest thing was we had to take the ball harder inside – especially Alando,” Taylor said. “He did that, and it opened up a lot of other things for us.”

Alando is Tucker, the 6-6 senior and candidate to be the national player of the year. He had a soft 11 points in the first half, and then an impressive 18 in the second. The 18 came despite Tucker missing five early free throws in the second half.

The final was 75-62. The Badgers are 25-2 overall, 11-1 in the Big Ten, and you didn’t have a hint how those numbers were possible watching them in the first half.

“We kind of let the crowd get to us for a while,” Taylor said. “We calmed down in the second half.”

What rattled the Badgers early, apparently, was all the noise in their favor. The crowd was either loaded with people wearing red in honor of St. Valentine’s day, or there were 5,000 Badgers fans, minimum, in the season’s largest announced gathering of 13,820.

The Iowa football fans have referred to the Metrodome as Kinnick North for a couple of decades. On Wednesday night, our once-hostile Barn could have passed for Kohl Center West whenever Tucker hit a bucket to push back a Gophers rally.

Taylor comes from Minneapolis North. He was 1-1 in games and 4-for-20 from the field in two previous visits to Williams Arena with the Badgers.

On Wednesday, he offered a solid effort: 4-for-10 from the field, 12 points, one assist, one steal, two turnovers in 39 minutes. “I’m more mature,” Taylor said. “I didn’t let the excitement of playing here get to me.”

Taylor didn’t even get his blood boiling when Lawrence McKenzie, his former rival from Minneapolis Henry, was draining three-pointers (4-for-6) and talking about it with enthusiasm.

The Badgers took note of some jawing McKenzie aimed at Trevon Hughes, a freshman guard who played five minutes.

“If he wants to woof at one of our freshmen, I guess that’s up to him,” Taylor said. “I wouldn’t expect that from him. Trevon’s a freshman, and he’s a senior.”

Actually, McKenzie is a junior, after sitting out a transfer season from Oklahoma. He could have stayed there and played for a program that now has NCAA expectations on an annual basis. Instead, McKenzie came home to Minnesota, where he’s getting more shots but not many victories.

Taylor said he was a teammate with McKenzie for two weeks in grade school. “Beyond that, we’ve always played against each other – always rivals,” he said.

Ziggy Kauls, the long-serving coach at Mounds View, has spent some time in Madison watching practices. He went downstairs in Williams Arena to say hello to a few people after the game.

Taylor saw Kauls, dropped an equipment bag he was carrying, shook hands with Ziggy, and they chatted briefly. The Badgers guard then headed for the corridor to talk with family, friends and a youth team that was collecting autographs.

“Kammron’s a great kid,” Kauls said. “Nothing fancy. He just plays point guard. He can get 20. He can get two. Either way, if the Badgers win, he’s happy.”