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Iowa hands No. 22 Wisconsin their fifth loss in six games

Iowa v Wisconsin

MADISON, WI - MARCH 02: D’Mitrik Trice #0 of the Wisconsin Badgers works against Jordan Bohannon #3 of the Iowa Hawkeyes during the first half of a game at the Kohl Center on March 2, 2017 in Madison, Wisconsin. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

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Jason Bohannon capped a game-ending, 14-3 run with a three-pointer with just 9.7 seconds left on the clock as Iowa handed No. 22 Wisconsin their fifth loss in the last six games on Thursday night.

Bohannon, who has two older brothers that both played at Wisconsin, finished with 11 points and five assists in the Kohl Center as the Hawkeyes won despite getting just eight points on 2-for-10 shooting from the Big Ten’s leading scorer, Peter Jok.

The story here, however, is Wisconsin, who has gone from being the team that everyone thought was inexplicably left out of the top 16 during the Selection Committee’s bracket reveal on Feb. 11th to a team that was a No. 6 seed in our latest bracket update on Thursday morning. They should drop even further after this, and things don’t get any easier this weekend, as Wisconsin will invite Richard Pitino and the red-hot Minnesota Golden Gophers to town on Sunday afternoon.

Wisconsin’s struggles date back to before this losing skid started. They were taken to overtime by Rutgers. They were taken to overtime by Nebraska. They struggled to put away Indiana as the Hoosiers played without O.G. Anunoby and James Blackmon Jr. Things have gone south in a hurry for a team that, at one point this season, was sitting at 21-3 overall and 10-1 in the Big Ten with a two-game cushion over everyone else in the conference.

They should have been able to coast to a regular season title.

Instead, they’ve now lost four straight games to unranked opponents. Their best win is over ... Syracuse? Indiana? Maryland?

This is not the kind of run that anyone expected out of the Badgers, not when they have a roster that includes Ethan Happ, Bronson Koenig and Nigel Hayes, and not when this same group turned a 9-9 start to last season into a trip to the Sweet 16 as a No. 7 seed.

It looked like Greg Gard had figured this thing out.

Instead, he’s now tasked with picking up the pieces and trying to find a way, in the span of a week, to rebuild his team’s confidence before losses start eliminating them from tournaments.