EVANSTON, Ill. — The initial signs were a bit worrisome.

The University of Wisconsin women's basketball was committing turnovers. On the other end, lowly Northwestern was hitting shots.

Were the Badgers really going to become the first team to lose to the Wildcats in Big Ten Conference play?

Was UW going to waste a chance to push itself toward the middle pack of teams in the conference standings?

The answer came with an 18-3 run late in the first half that sent the Badgers on their way to a 79-65 win Monday night at Welsh-Ryan Arena.

And it certainly was much tougher than UW's 30-point victory over Northwestern on Jan. 27 at the Kohl Center. The Badgers turned the ball over on each of their first three series, and 11 times in the first half.

The Wildcats led by as many as eight in the opening half behind a big effort from freshman center Amy Jaeschke (16 first-half points on 6-for-9 shooting).

In the end though, UW's scoring balance was too much.

The Badgers got 36 points from their bench — freshman forward Lin Zastrow (14), freshman guard Alyssa Karel (10) and sophomore forward Mariah Dunham (10) did the bulk of the damage — to go along with a game-high 21 from senior guard Janese Banks.

"Our bench production was outstanding today and a key reason why we won the game," said UW coach Lisa Stone, whose team had assists on 23 of its 33 field goals and shot 52.4 percent from the field.

Northwestern closed within 51-50 on Meshia Reed's
3-pointer with 13:30 to go. But the Badgers answered with a 9-0 run, and the Wildcats — who shot 53.3 percent from the field but turned the ball over 23 times — never got within eight the rest of the way.

With their fifth win in seven games, the Badgers moved into a tie for eighth place in the Big Ten standings, and UW now sits a game back of seventh-place Michigan.

"We're on a little bit of a roll here," Stone said. "We can play a little bit better than we did tonight, but we did enough to get the win."