With a flurry of turnovers and layups, the rout was on.

From there, the University of Wisconsin women's basketball team was on its way to its second straight win, a 75-45 victory over Northwestern Sunday in a Big Ten Conference game at the Kohl Center.

A season-high crowd of 7,744 watched as the Badgers raced out to a 40-13 halftime lead and were never challenged by the cellar-dwelling Wildcats.

And it was pretty clear right away the gap between the teams, which entered the game 10th and 11th, respectively, in the conference standings, was massive.

UW (10-9, 3-6 Big Ten), which pulled into a ninth-place tie with Illinois with the win and now sits a half-game back of eighth-place Michigan State, never trailed and had already built a 16-point lead 4 minutes, 47 seconds in.

And for the second straight game, it was the Badgers' defense that fueled their offense.

"What I wanted to do is carry on from what we did against Penn State," UW coach Lisa Stone said. "So today we wanted to make sure we established our defensive end first, which I thought we did."

But after holding the Lady Lions to 26.9 percent shooting in a dominant first half Thursday, the Badgers did themselves one better.

Northwestern (4-16, 0-8) shot just 4-for-27 (14.8 percent) in the opening half and turned the ball over 11 times, with six of those coming in the Wildcats ' first 10 possessions.

Northwestern went scoreless for a span of 4:41 late in the first half, and didn't score on consecutive possessions until freshman center Amy Jaeschke's basket made it 35-13 with 2:17 left in the half.

"We were not able to match up early," Wildcats coach Beth Combs said. "A couple of things that we talked about with transition defense and, for us, quality possessions, we were not able to do right off the bat, put ourselves in a hole. Wisconsin's playing very, very well right now."

The Badgers, in comparison, made 51.5 percent of their shots in the opening half, including a 4-for-8 effort from behind the 3-point line.

Senior guard Jolene Anderson scored a game-high 24 points on 10-for-17 shooting to pace UW, and was outscoring Northwestern 20-19 6:07 into the second half.

Senior guard Janese Banks added 15 points for the Badgers, who won back-to-back games for the first time since Dec. 11 and 14, when they beat UW-Green Bay and South Dakota State.

"It was just a matter of us being determined and realizing that our offense will come from our defense," said Anderson, who also had a game-high 11 rebounds. "Our offense will always be there; it's just a matter of getting stops, and I think the past two games we've done a pretty good job of that."