With plenty of excitement surrounding the beginning of the Wisconsin women’s basketball season after last weekend’s exhibition trouncing of UW-Oshkosh, the Badgers immediately were burdened with high expectations. Wisconsin rose to the occasion Sunday at the Kohl Center, never trailing in a 68-43 victory over the North Dakota Fighting Sioux.

Led by junior forward Tara Steinbauer, who scored 10 points and pulled down 11 rebounds for her third career double-double, and junior guard Alyssa Karel, who led all players with 15 points, Wisconsin began its season with a solid offensive effort.

The Badgers led the Sioux for the entirety of the game and made 41.7 percent of their field goals. Meanwhile, North Dakota shot only 26.6 percent from the field and made only 43.5 percent of its free throws.

Steinbauer — Wisconsin’s best offensive post player at 6-foot-1 — made only 3-of-8 field goal attempts, but made all four of her free throws. Senior guard Rae Lin D’Alie also contributed 11 points, six rebounds and four steals. With a total of six players scoring seven or more points, and four players with at least four rebounds, UW head coach Lisa Stone was pleased with her team’s balanced effort.

“Obviously, we’re very excited about our first ‘W’ here at the Kohl Center,” Stone said. “We talk a lot about protecting our home court, and this was a good way to start. But with every first game, there’s a lot to work on, and when you force a team into 26 turnovers, and they shoot the ball less than 30 percent, and we go plus-six on the glass, our defense is doing some very, very good things.”

From the start, both teams were up-tempo, with the Badgers scoring 13 points off 16 Sioux turnovers in the first half. Karel, the team’s leading scorer from last season, was especially hot. The 5-foot-7 guard was the team’s sparkplug in the early minutes, as she scored 11 of the team’s first 15 points. For the game, Karel was 5-of-12 from the field and an impressive 3-for-7 from 3-point range.

“Yeah, it sounds good when you’re able to come out and you’re kinda hot,” Karel said. “I think [North Dakota] did a great job adjusting, and I really do feel like I didn’t get a ton of open shots, but the great thing about this team is that you know that everyone else is able to get to the basket and score, so we have a lot of different dimensions going on.”

For the Sioux, the game was marked by a series of offensive droughts in both halves. After the 13:44 mark, North Dakota did not score for more than nine minutes. Later on in the second half, the Sioux had to endure an almost six-minute drought until the 8:00 mark.

“If you’re going to play on the road against a team like Wisconsin, you’ve got to match them on your end of the floor,” North Dakota head coach Gene Roebuck said. “Even though I think defensively we were doing a good job — they weren’t exactly scoring every time down the floor — we just couldn’t make baskets ourselves. If you’re on the road, you’ve got to answer when the other team knocks down some shots. I don’t think we did.”

A pleasant surprise for the Badgers was sophomore guard Jade Davis, the team’s usual 3-point specialist. While Davis was 2-of-5 from 3-point range in a surprising 22 minutes of playing time, Stone effusively praised Davis’ defense.

“I thought in the second half, when we needed some energy, I thought Jade really provided that for us, particularly defensively,” Stone said. “She came in, knocked some loose balls away, got some boards for us. … She’s known as a shooter. And she’s a great shooter — she’s worked on her shot — but in today’s game, she was a defensive energizer for us.”

While North Dakota was able to put together a small run heading into halftime by cutting the lead to 15, Wisconsin never squandered the lead, due in large part to their 26 points off turnovers. The Sioux were only able to generate 14 points off 18 Badger turnovers and were outscored 12-4 in fast-break points.

Although the statistics looked good on paper, Stone was quick to point out that her team has several areas that need to be improved.

“We’ve got a lot of things to work on,” Stone said. “Taking care of the ball; we had nine turnovers in each half, and in my opinion, nine of those probably were directly related to us. … We just have to shore up over the long-range in terms of turnovers and improve in the rebounding area.”