Young teams are supposed to be inexperienced. They're supposed to make mistakes and fold under pressure. Someone forgot to tell that to the UW women's basketball team Tuesday night as they squeaked by a very talented, veteran Western Michigan squad 80-77.

Wisconsin's sophomore forward Caitlin Gibson hit a free throw with six seconds left to put her team up by three. Seconds later, Western Michigan's Nicole Watkins got a good look from downtown, but her shot clanked off the front rim and the Broncos were unable to get another shot off before the buzzer sounded and the Badgers improved to 2-0 on the season.

"I'm proud of them, this is a winning team," UW head coach Lisa Stone said. "They want to win and put the game away."

Badger standout guard Jolene Anderson stole the show with a team-high 26 points, including 5-of-9 from beyond the 3-point arc. She also tallied nine rebounds and six assists.

The Badgers came out of the gate with a bang, scoring the game's first eight points. It looked like they were going to run away with it. But when junior forward Danielle Ward picked up her second foul with 16:21 left in the first half, the Broncos, led by senior guard Carrie Moore, decided to turn up the heat.

Moore went into the locker room with 17 points to her name on 6-of-10 shooting. She finished with a game-high 29.

"What a great player Carrie Moore is," Stone said. "[She's] one of the finest."

Moore wasn't the only Bronco to catch fire. Sophomore guard Tiera DeLaHoussaye was 9-of-11 from the field and finished with 23 points and six assists.

With Ward on the bench in foul trouble much of the game, Gibson made her presence known in the post, finishing with a hard-fought 15 points and seven rebounds. Junior guard Janese Banks followed up her career-high 28-point performance against Air Force with another double-digit effort of 12 points.

Freshman point guard Rae Lin D'Alie continued her impressive play as she scored a quiet eight points to go along with four assists and five steals.

Although the Badgers never surrendered their initial lead, the game was back and forth, nonetheless. Anderson went on a scoring spree midway through the second half, but each time she hit a shot, Moore seemed to match it on the other end of the floor. Each time the Badgers had the momentum on their side, the Broncos stole it right back.

Teah Gant, another freshman guard, had only three points but played tremendous defense one-on-one against Moore in the second half. She was a main reason why the Broncos were unable to tie the game at any point, no matter how close they came.

With 0.1 seconds left in the first half, Western Michigan head coach Ron Stewart took a costly timeout to draw up a play from the opposite baseline, a timeout he could have used at the end of the game.

"That put ourselves in a tough situation to finish a game like that with no timeouts," Stewart noted. "I won't do that again."

The Badgers may have a lot of youth, but Anderson has no lack of experience. With 1:16 remaining in the game, a nearly full shot clock and her team up four points, Anderson found herself wide open for a three pointer along the baseline, a shot that she usually buries. An inexperienced player would take that shot, but Anderson pulled it out to milk the clock.

Just prior to that, Stone pointed to her head and said, "Think about it." Obviously Anderson understood the message.

Anderson and the other Badger veterans seem to be rubbing off on the younger players quite a bit.

"I thought our freshmen [particularly Gant, D'Alie, Brittany Heins, and Sarah Ingison] made really, really good decisions," Stone added enthusiastically.

They're just not playing like freshmen.

As the game came down to the wire, Stone, her 13 players and the rest of the Badger fans in the Kohl Center seemed to hold their collective breaths.

The Badgers will look to continue their perfect record Friday night at 7:00 p.m. at the Kohl Center against Central Connecticut State.