PHILADELPHIA -- With a foul to give and less than 20 seconds remaining, Notre Dame coach Mike Brey told his team to play aggressive defense and see what happened.
As soon as Wisconsin inbounded the ball, Fighting Irish junior Demetrius Jackson and sophomore forward Bonzie Colson surrounded Badgers star Nigel Hayes, who coughed it up -- right into Jackson's hands.
"Coach did a great job recognizing and letting us know that we had a foul to give, so we had a really aggressive trap, and then Bonzie made a great defensive play, getting his hands on it," Jackson said. "It kind of fell into my arms and I just wanted to put it in and finish it."
Jackson's layup with 13 seconds left helped Notre Dame reach the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament with a thrilling 61-56 victory over Wisconsin on Friday.
The Fighting Irish won the East Region semifinal with an 8-0 run in the final half-minute, turning the tide in the blink of an eye on the stunned Badgers. Notre Dame advances to face No. 1 seed North Carolina or No. 5 Indiana in the East Regional final on Sunday, with a Final Four berth in Houston next weekend on the line.
"We go from Vitto (Brown) hitting the 3 to thinking we have a chance to have the game, and you blink your eyes and the next thing you know Jackson's shooting two free throws and now we're down five and now we're going home," Hayes said. "It's kind of the nature of this whole tournament."
Wisconsin took a 56-53 lead with 26 seconds left on a 3-pointer by Brown, a junior forward, but Jackson wasn't going to let that be the last big shot.
The Fighting Irish guard cut the lead to one with a driving layup with 19 seconds left before his heroics seconds later.
It was a play that almost didn't happen -- Jackson told Colson to go back to halfcourt to guard against a leak-out, but Colson stayed near the baseline.
"I'm just really glad that Bonzie didn't listen to me on that play," he quipped.
Notre Dame forced three turnovers in the final 15 seconds, with foul shots by junior V.J. Beachem and Jackson sealing the victory. Those were the final of 17 giveaways by the Badgers, who averaged only 10.8 turns per game headed into the evening.
That was the toughest part to stomach for Wisconsin coach Greg Gard, who took over the program when Bo Ryan retired in mid-December and led a team that was 9-9 in mid-January back into the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
"I don't know if there's a program in the country that prides itself more on taking care of the ball and valuing every possession more than Wisconsin," Gard said. "I don't know if there's anybody that works on it more than we do. And to have this kind of ending ... it will sting for a while."
Beachem finished with 19 points and Jackson had 16 despite starting 1 of 10 from the floor. Senior Zach Auguste added 13 points and 12 rebounds for the Fighting Irish.
For the first 30 minutes or so of the Sweet 16 matchup, defense ruled. Neither team reached 40 points until fewer than eight minutes remained as both struggled for long stretches to find any sort of offensive consistency.
Suddenly, the buckets started coming from both sides, and Notre Dame erased an eight-point deficit to take its first lead since three minutes into the first half at 38-37 with 8:50 left. That set up a wild closing stretch which saw multiple ties and lead changes before Jackson's final sequence.
After making less than a quarter of its shots in the first half, the Fighting Irish were 15 for 26 from the floor in the second.
"I think in the second half we were moving the ball better, getting it side to side, getting it inside and out," said Beachem, who had 16 of his 19 points after halftime. "And we just had better movement and our shots were just a little more open. And all of us were able to knock them down."
Wisconsin got 14 points and 12 rebounds from freshman Ethan Happ, who fouled out with 47 seconds left after putting the Badgers up by two points. Junior Zak Showalter and senior Nigel Hayes added 11 points apiece.
Though the two teams traded buckets in the opening five minutes, both teams struggled offensively through much of the first half.
Notre Dame made four of its first 10 shots from the floor before going cold, making one of its next 15. Wisconsin wasn't much better, making 2 of 11 during one stretch, as the teams combined to go 16 of 55 from the field during the opening 20 minutes.
Wisconsin led by as many as nine points with 5:03 left in the half as Notre Dame went nearly six minutes without a point. The Badgers went cold, missing their final four shots of the half and managing one point in that time.
Matt Farrell's 3-pointer with less than four minutes left helped Notre Dame recover and go into the break trailing 23-19.
NOTES: Notre Dame and Wisconsin have met 29 times, with the Fighting Irish leading 19-10. The teams had never previously met in the postseason. ... Both teams advanced to the Sweet 16 via a last-second shot; Wisconsin's Bronson Koenig hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer to beat No. 2 Xavier, and Rex Pflueger's tip-in with 1.5 seconds left lifted Notre Dame past No. 14 Stephen F. Austin. ... This was Wisconsin's fifth appearance in the Sweet 16 in the last six seasons, the most by any program in the nation. Eight programs have done so four times. The Badgers' 15 NCAA Tournament wins during that time are second only to Kentucky's 20.
