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Vulnerable Wisconsin has to ‘get better at a lot of things’

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Vulnerable Wisconsin has to ‘get better at a lot of things’


PISCATAWAY, N.J. — The reason why the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team lost its fourth straight for the first time in six seasons was obvious to the Badgers, so despite utter domination for by Rutgers for 40 minutes, after the game they kept on referring back to the first 83 seconds.

“We knew coming into the game they were trying to throw that first punch,” Wisconsin senior forward Steven Crowl said. “They always do every time I played them.”

Yet it didn’t take long for the Scarlet Knights to run Wisconsin out of the gym. Because, frankly, of late that’s exactly what runs like the 9-0, four Badgers-turnover start by Rutgers in a 78-56 blowout loss at Jersey Mike’s Arena have done.

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A 12-2 first 4 minutes, 8 seconds at Penn State on Jan. 16, a 15-2 second-half run at Nebraska on Feb. 1, a 14-6 run to open the second half against Purdue on Feb. 4, a 10-1 first-half run by Michigan on Wednesday and then another run Saturday; Game changed. Game over. Whatever it is, whenever it comes, Wisconsin (16-8, 8-5 Big Ten) can’t muster a win when it falls into that big a hole.

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Saturday, though, was the worst of all of them. Though the Badgers couldn’t do enough to win in any of those five games (all five of their losses in 2024), Wisconsin had at least shown some ability to claw back when allowing a big run in the first 10 minutes of a half. Elite teams — to win at an elite level — have to do that. 

“We’ve had that confidence at times this year, when you’re at home and start good and everyone starts hitting shots and it just continues to roll,” Crowl said. “That’s what happened for them. We didn’t shut it off at all.”

The Badgers completely folded against the Scarlet Knights (13-10, 5-7). It seems like almost a full season ago that Wisconsin did the opposite, coming back from 15-4 deficit and 1-of-12 start on its field goals in a 69-61 win over SMU to win the Fort Myers Tip-Off on Nov. 22, 2023 that sparked Wisconsin’s season turnaround. 

Months later, a new low for Wisconsin came within a game where it seemed hopeless and confused against the utter domination of the 12th-ranked team in the Big Ten fresh off a loss against the last-place team in the conference (the Wolverines) Wednesday — all because it hasn’t been able to respond when teams strike big. And for that reason, No. 11 Wisconsin’s season that seemed destined to end as a top seed in the NCAA Tournament has entered a critical stage to salvage that.



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Wisconsin guard Chucky Hepburn drives to the basket against Rutgers center Clifford Omoruyi during the second half Saturday in Piscataway, N.J.

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It’s not like Wisconsin didn’t know that Rutgers would pressure them. Wisconsin coach Greg Gard said the team had practiced the press break each of the last two days leading up to Saturday’s loss. Yet for some reason, point guard Chucky Hepburn got caught for a rare 10-second violation, players didn’t come to the ball to help the inbounder and players who have spent next to no time handling the ball in the backcourt were the best options the Badgers can get open to push past the mid-court line.

“We worked on it,” Essegian said. “I feel like we’ve usually been pretty good with pressure. I don’t know why we weren’t real good today.”

At one point of the first half, Hepburn was locked up as graduate forward Tyler Wahl looked to inbound the ball following a made basket by the Scarlet Knights. With the five-second count ticking, Wahl had no choice but to throw the ball in with Rutgers’ Mawot Mag easily stealing the errant pass away at the 8:33 mark of the first half. Yet a miss by Mag and rebound by Wahl, who finally had a seam to take it up the court, was perhaps the Badgers’ only chance amid a moment of total discombobulation.

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Wisconsin turned the ball over 11 times in the first half. That’s compared to just one in the second half. But erratic play like that from an opponent, as well as an early advantage on the scoreboard, has an effect on teams as it did on Rutgers.

“And then the basket starts to look extremely big,” Gard said.

Gard said after the game that the 3-point defense was “the least of the problems today” after Rutgers hit 10 3s on 58.8% shooting from deep. He also said after Wednesday’s loss that the reason for the Badgers’ losing streak wasn’t due to phycological factors, just mistakes that it needs to correct and still hasn’t.

But Crowl admitted after the game that when teams gain the type of momentum that they do early in games or halves — especially on their home floor — the mental aspect of fighting back into a game is highlighted more. Wisconsin shot 32.8% from the field and 23.8% from 3 in a season-low offensive output.

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“When you give them confidence like that, it kind of takes away your confidence almost,” Crowl said. “We’ve got to be more mentally tough than that.”

Crowl said he hasn’t seen any anxiety on the court. He echoed what Wahl said following the Michigan loss that a season that will always have ups and downs is simply in a down. The message, while repetitive, has recent history to back it up. Yet 2018 is the last year that a down stretch has led to four straight losses, not even among six losses in seven games early in the conference schedule last season.

For some of their season lows to be sparked by such a short stretch at the start of the game, as Wisconsin said following the game, is troubling for a team that has at times considered itself among the elites in the country. For that, he Badgers have shown across their losing streak they’re more vulnerable than previously thought.

All it has taken to throw them off entirely is something all teams — including Wisconsin — expect: A run.

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“We got to get better at a lot of things,” Crowl said, “and a lot of that goes into making those comebacks.”



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Wisconsin

Wisconsin Weekend: Pride bar crawl, Father’s Day deals, and more

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Wisconsin Weekend: Pride bar crawl, Father’s Day deals, and more


MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee has no shortage of ways to celebrate this weekend, from a Pride bar crawl to Father’s Day deals around the city and Juneteenth celebrations.

Summerfest and Northcott Neighborhood House are hosting a Juneteenth celebration filled with music and culture at the Summerfest grounds.

Watch: Kidd O’Shea breaks down this weekend’s events:

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Wisconsin Weekend in a Minute: June 19-21

The event kicks off right after the traditional Juneteenth Day Festival wraps up.

Pride Bar Crawl

The 9th annual Pride Bar Crawl kicks off Saturday at 4 p.m. at Walker’s Pint.

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Tickets include drinks and access to exclusive specials at partner bars. Twenty percent of proceeds will benefit the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center.

The crawl wraps up with an after-party and drag show at La Cage Nightclub.

Father’s Day

On Sunday, The Motor Restaurant at the Harley-Davidson Museum is offering a free beer for dad when purchased with a meal, along with free admission to the museum. Reservations are highly encouraged.

Families can also take dad to the Milwaukee County Zoo, where all fathers receive free admission on Sunday.

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These Wisconsin swing voters say Trump’s war in Iran wasn’t worth it

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These Wisconsin swing voters say Trump’s war in Iran wasn’t worth it


Vessels are anchored along the Strait of Hormuz.

Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images


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Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images

The war in Iran was a costly blunder, according to swing voters in the battleground state of Wisconsin.

NPR observed two online focus groups on Tuesday featuring voters who supported Joe Biden in 2020 and then Donald Trump in 2024.

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President Trump had just announced a framework agreement to end the war, which he signed on Wednesday.

Yet among the focus groups’ 13 participants, no one said they thought the conflict with Iran was “worth it,” and nine said they felt that the U.S. is coming out of this conflict weaker than before.

Corey M., a 33-year-old independent voter, said he is concerned that the U.S. expended “so much financially and so much of our arsenal,” with little to show for it. (All participants agreed to be part of the focus groups on the condition that they be identified by their first name and last initial only.)

“We essentially got nothing out of it,” he said. “It’s hurt our economy and increased expenses for the everyday American, and it accomplished the square root of nothing.”

Focus groups are not scientifically significant like polling. But they provide insight into how Americans are thinking about what they see in the news.

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These focus groups — made up of 10 self-described independents, two Democrats and one Republican — were conducted by messaging and market research firms Engagious and Sago as part of the Swing Voter Project. NPR is a partner on the project.

Rich Thau, president of Engagious, moderated the focus groups. He has been asking voters in key states about this conflict since March. And he said voters have been consistent.

“They were never on board,” Thau said. “Not the beginning. Not in the middle. And as we just learned, not at the end either, judging from what we heard from Wisconsin swing voters.”

Sam M., a 30-year-old independent, said from what he read about the deal, it wasn’t leaving the U.S. in a better position than before the war. In fact, he said he thought the Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration — which Trump backed out of — was a better deal for the United States.



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President of Wisconsin’s largest mosque released from ICE custody

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President of Wisconsin’s largest mosque released from ICE custody


A federal judge has ordered the release of the president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque, after finding that immigration officials probably detained him in retaliation against his public advocacy for Palestinian rights, suppressing his first amendment rights in the process.

The US district judge James Patrick Hanlon’s order on Thursday marked a sharp rebuke against Trump officials, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who had tried to paint Salah Sarsour as a national security threat.

“Salah Sarsour, who has lived in this country for more than three decades and served as a core pillar in his community without any issues, should never have been detained in the first place,” his legal team wrote in a statement. “While we continue to fight these baseless claims in court, today is about celebrating a family being reunited. It is also a sober reminder that, if the government can target Mr Sarsour, everyone’s free speech rights are at risk.”

Sarsour describes himself as a stateless Palestinian, according to the order. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says that he is a Jordanian citizen. He has lived in the United States for more than three decades, becoming a legal permanent resident in 1998. Immigration officials approved Sarsour’s citizenship application decades ago, though he did not naturalize.

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Sarsour has garnered public attention as a champion for Palestinian rights, and serves as a board member of an advocacy group called American Muslims for Palestine.

But Rubio personally signed off on a memo to the DHS last year describing Sarsour as deportable despite his green card, because “his actions undermine US foreign policy to combat antisemitism around the world”. The memo, cited in Hanlon’s order, accuses Sarsour’s group of being “found to have been involved in activities providing funds to Hamas”.

A group of plainclothes ICE officers from at least 10 unmarked vehicles swarmed Sarsour on 30 March of this year, arresting him and putting him in deportation proceedings. ICE ultimately detained him in Clay county jail in Indiana.

Sarsour lost 30lb while detained, the order says. His lawyers told the court that he was “at constant risk of developing serious complications from diabetes given that the medical staff only checks his blood-sugar levels once a month”. Tightly controlling diabetes typically requires multiple glucose checks daily.

Hanlon’s order says that homeland security officials and Rubio probably trampled on Sarsour’s first amendment right to free speech and appeared to have arrested him in retaliation for his Palestinian rights advocacy.

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The order cited a New York Times story and the website for the Heritage Foundation, the conservative thinktank that dreamed up Project 2025,

The Heritage Foundation presented the White House with the idea to present prominent foreign-born Muslims and Palestinian rights leaders as terrorists in order to sue them, deport them or pressure employers to fire them, the order says, citing reporting from the Times and Heritage’s own website. Sarsour was probably among the targets of that campaign, the order says.

The federal government, through its lawyers, contended that Sarsour should be deported based on two convictions from more than three decades ago in Israel – one for throwing a molotov cocktail and the other for attempting to store weapons and ammunition.

Sarsour denies having committed those crimes.

But Hanlon viewed those crimes as a non-issue for justifying his incarceration, noting that the federal government knew about them since the 1990s and approved his legal permanent residency and his citizenship application anyway.

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Sarsour’s speech on Palestinian rights “is core political speech and squarely within the scope of the First Amendment”, the order says. “Mr Sarsour has submitted evidence allowing a reasonable inference that his protected speech was ‘at least a motivating factor’ in Respondents’ decision to detain him.”

A spokesperson for homeland security described Sarsour as a “terrorist”, citing the convictions from his youth in Israel.

Government lawyers had argued that Sarsour did not have the same first amendment rights as US citizens. If he were released, they said, he should have to pay a $25,000 bond, wear an ankle monitor, check in routinely with ICE and remain confined to his house.

Instead, Hanlon ordered his release on personal recognizance, meaning that Sarsour does not have to pay a cash bond to compel him to show up in court again. The order, however, requires him to remain in the state of Wisconsin.



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