Michigan was the best team in the Big Ten this season and one of the best teams in the entire collegiate landscape. The Wolverines went 29-2 and won the Big Ten by four games. But the Maize and Blue did have one hiccup this season and that came back in January when the Wolverines fell to the Wisconsin Badgers at home.

On Saturday, Michigan will get a chance to avenge that loss. After the Wolverines took down Ohio State and Wisconsin beat Illinois in overtime, the two teams will meet once again, this time in the Semifinals of the Big Ten Tournament.

Following Wisconsin’s win over Illinois, coach Greg Gard spoke about facing Michigan for the second time this season.

“They’re a terrific team,” Gard said. “You’ve got to make shots. You’ve got to be able to guard. Mara is a handful. Lendeborg is a handful. You go up-and-down the list. Point guard Cadeau. They’re well put together in terms of the pieces fit really well together, how they play off one another is exceptional. They can hurt you inside. They can shoot 3s. They make it hard because of how they defend, and Mara can take up a lot of space in the paint.

“So you have to be — I think we made 15, 16 3s in Ann Arbor. We’ll have to get our rest tonight and start diving through film. I know the assistants have been working ahead of that. And then get ready as we prep and rest up over the next, I don’t know, 20 hours or so.”

Make the best man win

While Michigan is looking to take down Wisconsin for the first time this season, a former Dusty May player is looking to beat his former coach once again. Nick Boyd played under Dusty May at FAU and Boyd credits May for where he is at today.

“It’s just an honor,” Boyd said of facing May. “He’s a big reason why I’m in this position I am today, his mentorship and just showing me how to be a good human being. He set that example while I was with him for a couple years. I’m happy for him. He’s come a long way. I seen him when he had zero championships, and I don’t know how many he has now.

“It’s just awesome we get to square off again. When the ball goes in the air, may the best man win.”

Michigan and Wisconsin will play on Saturday at 1 p.m. ET on CBS on Saturday.

MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin legislator has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct in connection with a bitter feud with her caucus over resolutions honoring Hispanics.

Prosecutors in Milwaukee County charged state Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez in February. Online court records show the Milwaukee Democrat entered the guilty plea Friday, and Judge Paul Malloy ordered her to pay a $300 fine and submit a DNA sample. She could have faced up to 90 days in jail.

Ortiz-Velez said in a statement after the sentencing that she will pay the fine and remains focused on her constituents, not caucus infighting.

“My voting choices caused a rift that has been ugly and bitter,” she said. “My constituents did not send me to Madison to litigate internal caucus disputes or be distracted by the personal feuds — they sent me there to deliver results.”

A spokesperson from Assembly Democratic Minority Leader Greta Neubauer did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

According to the criminal complaint, the feud began in August as Democratic members of the state Assembly were planning resolutions honoring Hispanic heritage and Hispanic veterans in observance of Hispanic Heritage Month in September.

Ortiz-Velez grew angry because she believed an unnamed lawmaker drafting the heritage resolution had intentionally excluded her from working on it.

The complaint states that she had been invited to work on the resolution in June and chose not to participate but still wanted to help draft the language. She contacted media outlets saying she had been intentionally left out of the resolution work. She also told the resolution’s author that she felt excluded from working on another resolution that same legislator was crafting honoring Hispanic veterans, saying her late husband was a Hispanic veteran.

Two more unnamed lawmakers told investigators that Ortiz-Velez told them in separate phone conversations that she was going to spread “negative personal information” about the resolutions’ author to the media and that “they are going to do what I want them to do, or I’m going to x, y and z,” according to the complaint.

When one of the lawmakers asked her what that meant, she made comments about the resolutions’ author’s personal life and other legislators. The complaint characterized those remarks as “indecent and tended to disrupt the good public order” but does not elaborate or offer any more specificity.

Democratic leaders issued a statement in September saying Ortiz-Velez had made a comment about shooting three caucus members. That statement came a day after another statement announcing that Ortiz-Velez was leaving the Democratic caucus.

In interviews with the news website Wisconsin Right Now and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Ortiz-Velez denied that she threatened her colleagues. But the Legislature’s human resources office barred her from entering the state Capitol for a day. A spokesperson for Assembly Republican Speaker Robin Vos said at the time that she shouldn’t have been banned.

Ortiz-Velez’s attorney, Michael Cernin, said in a telephone interview Friday that Assembly Democrats were already upset with Ortiz-Velez going into September because she had voted for the 2025-27 state budget and for new legislative maps Democratic Gov. Tony Evers drew up in 2024. Democrats opposed the spending plan in part because they felt it doesn’t adequately fund public schools and argued the state Supreme Court should have drawn the new legislative maps.

Rep. Priscilla Prado, another Milwaukee Democrat, wouldn’t allow Ortiz-Velez to participate in the Hispanic resolutions, he said. Two of the lawmakers who went unnamed in the complaint made allegations to investigators that Ortiz-Velez had threatened to expose unsavory elements of Prado’s personal life to the media, he said.

“It’s incredibly petty, and Sylvia didn’t want any part of this,” Cernin said. “Sylvia truly wanted to spare Prado any sort of embarrassment on this.”

No one immediately responded to messages left with Prado’s Capitol’s office seeking comment on Friday afternoon.

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