Wisconsin 31 - 30 Iowa: Letdown game avoided

By Grapthar's Hammer, by the Sons of Worvan, what a ballgame. Strangely enough, Wisconsin pulled through despite all the "keys to the game" pointing in Iowa's direction. White was ineffective and injured early, and Iowa managed to keep Clay from being the force that he can be on offense. Furthermore, Wisconsin was missing several players on offense by halftime, with Toon out after last week, White out with his injury, Kendricks out, and the starting center out. Iowa also managed to stymie Wisconsin's pass rush. Stanzi had all sorts of time and the only sack that Watt managed was a (well-timed) coverage sack during Iowa's last drive. Due to their limiting of Clay and White's injury the UW offense leaned on Tolzein's arm, and he looked great despite missing his two favorite recievers. He even gave them a gift INT at the 26 yard line in the 4th quarter but Iowa didn't do much with it (though the FG definitely gave UW a higher mountain to climb)




How Wisconsin won: Aside from the excellent execution mentioned above, the big thing I took away from this game was the preparation and playcalling. Bielema and Christ had the stones to go for it on two 4th downs, one on fourth and goal at the 1, and the other at 4th and ~4 at the Iowa ~35 yard line in their final drive. However, my favorite play call was the fake punt that sparked that last drive. The coaching staff noticed that Iowa was not sending many players forward on the punt block, and the punter just took it and ran. He had run 10 yards or so before any of the players running back to cover the kick even realized it.

How Iowa lost: Special teams, poor clock management, and erratic passing. Stanzi's overall numbers were great but Wisconsin's coverage today was garbage and he should have had an even bigger game. Iowa left 4 points on the board early with a missed PAT and a bungled FG snap, and further hurt themselves with some dumb penalties in the second half. In Wisconsin's second drive of the 3rd quarter, the Hawkeyes pinned Gilreath deep on a kickoff that was erased by an offsides call. Gilreath took the next punt to the 50, and nearly all the way were it not for the kicker doing just enough to trip him up.

Game ball: Bret Bielema and Paul Chryst
Honorable mention: Clay, Ball, Tolzien, Gilreath

Bielema has completely erased all of my reservations about him in this win. Not only did the team show up (preparation has always been my main complaint with Bielema), but they made several great playcalls and the UW special teams unit seems to have fixed some of the mistakes that were plaguing them early in the season.

Looking ahead
10/30: BYE
11/6: @Purdue
11/13: Indiana
11/20: @Michigan
11/27: Northwestern

Wisconsin gets a week to heal up, then gets to face the two soft Indiana teams before taking on the Denard Robinson Show at the Big House and seeks to avoid another typical Northwestern wrench-in-the-gears game. I shake my fist at them for not being able to close it out against Sparty this week. Ugh. That would have been perfect.

Michigan State is still in the driver's seat, and the rest of their schedule looks favorable (even if they lose at Iowa next week).
10/30: @Iowa
11/6: Minnesota
11/13: BYE
11/20: Purdue
11/27: @PSU

I expect them to lose at Iowa, but I don't really see them losing any of their other games. They'll know exactly what they're playing for if they're still undefeated by the PSU game, and PSU is fading fast. The big question is which team of UW and aOSU gets selected behind MSU to go to a BCS bowl.

Preview: Wisconsin at Iowa

This is the last big game of the season for the Badgers, so hopefully that's enough to get the team over the letdown game hump. After this week the Badgers have a bye before facing Purdue and Indiana, traveling to the Big House to face Denard Robinson, and ending the season vs Northwestern at Camp Randall. For the Badgers to have a shot at the Rose Bowl they need to win this game and hope Michigan State loses to Iowa and someone else - NW seems like a good candidate this week taking on MSU for their homecoming in Evanston. Aside from that we would just have to hope that PSU picks them off in the last game of the season.

Going into this game I was sure Wisconsin would get blown out - I thought this game had 27-10 written all over it. Now I'm not so sure. Much of the vibe I've gotten this week is that Wisconsin is firing on all cylinders and knows it, and isn't just sitting on their big victory last week. The other question is how good Iowa is. They lost on the road to a decent Arizona team, and crushed a not so great Penn State team at Kinnick. This will be a big test for them as well. Their defense has looked great, but then again, so did OSU's and the Badger offensive line had their way with them.

How Wisconsin wins: J.J. Watt gets pressure on Stanzi and James White gets to the edge consistently. The Badgers did a decent enough job defending Boom Herron last week and I don't think Robinson or the Hawkeyes O-line are as good as OSU's. Stanzi is a good QB if he has time but he is prone to mistakes, and pressure from the likes of Watt and Nzegwu should lead to a few turnovers.

How Iowa wins: Aside from the letdown game factor, Iowa wins this game by making Scott Tolzien beat them. He's a decent enough QB, but only in the context of UW's offense. He's not a guy you want throwing every down.

Final prediction: I'll go with MB's prediction of 28-24 Iowa, though I feel much better about this matchup than I did a few days ago.

Arizona State defeats Arizona state (UW wins 20-19)

Wisconsin was lucky to win this game. They looked terrible, especially on defense and special teams. Wisconsin just couldn't tackle. At all. They were further hurt by the fact that 2009 Big 10 Defensive Freshman of the Year Chris Borland re-injured his separated shoulder three minutes into the game. DE and defensive captain J.J. Watt had to be taken off the field twice (though he returned each time), and Culmer St. Jean missed a fair amount of time too.

Arizona absolutely shredded UW's special teams, running one kick back in the first quarter, taking another to the house in the second (that was called back for two blocking in the back penalties), and nearly got a third at the end of the half (mentioned below). All in all ASU netted 256 return yards. That's just inexcusable.

The story of the game was ASU's miscues. They committed 8 penalties in the first half, including one I hadn't seen before - a sideline penalty on the ASU coaching staff. That sparked a tirade by ASU coach Dennis Erickson that probably should have been flagged a second time. They also committed a costly late hit penalty to keep UW's final, clock-killing drive alive. Erickson waited far too long to burn ASU's timeouts during the last drive, and found Wisconsin able to run out the clock before they could get it back.

Most importantly though, ASU left 15 points on the field. As they were slashing through UW in the first half, ASU missed out on two straight touchdowns, one by a clumsily dropped pass by one of their players, and another on a catch out of bounds by another reciever who just missed getting his foot down by inches. After UW scored to take the lead with 10 seconds left in first half, UW kicked off to ASU and they nearly ran it all the way back until Shelton Johnson finally made the tackle at the one yard line.

Most painfully, ASU led a drive to tie the game late in the 4th quarter and carved through the porous Wisconsin defense yet again to apparently get the game tying score. But then Jay Valai dove in and blocked the extra point, and the Badgers held on to win.

Wisconsin was outplayed in all aspects of the game. The offense looked out of sorts in the first half. When the Badgers were only down by 3, from the playcalling you'd guess that they were trailing by 2+ TDs. Too much passing from Tolzien, though he did make some nice plays to Kendricks. The 'real' Wisconsin only showed up in the 3rd quarter, when they ground out an 85-yard drive for a TD, followed by finally getting some pressure on Threet for once. Clay had a quietly decent game. For some reason they were barely using him early in the game and the announcers were confused that he was on the bench while the offense was sputtering. He still ended up over the century mark.

Game Ball (tie): Sheldon Johnson and Jay Valai
Tip o' the Cap: Steven Threet had a fantastic game. He was fully in command of that offense and was shredding the decimated UW linebacker corps.
Wag of the Finger: Obviously, the special teams coaching staff. I wonder if they'll run around tackling random people during the week, much like P.J. Hill and the rest of the running game had to carry footballs around all week when they had fumbling problems a few weeks ago.

The Badgers are banged up, but at least they effectively have a Bye next week against Austin Peay before B10 play starts in East Lansing on Oct. 2.

Game preview: Arizona State (2-0) at Wisconsin (2-0)

Arizona State Sun Devils (2-0) at Wisconsin Badgers (2-0), 2:30 PM CT

Well, at least we're playing a somewhat credible opponent, even if they are expected to finish 9th in the Pac 10. I'm hoping to see the Badgers bounce back from their general carelessness in their last 2 games (especially the SJSU game), and hopefully having a real opponent here will wake the team up, though playing Austin Peay next week won't help much on that front.

I love how the UW Badgers website has billed this as a "clash of unbeatens", as if that means anything in the quasi-preseason.

Badgers injuries
KR Gilreath (concussion) and WR Nick Toon (turf toe) are both expected to miss the game. Honestly I'm surprised that Gilreath can even walk, let alone practice, following that nasty hit last week. RT Oglesby will probably be kept out this game too. LB and returning defensive rookie of the year Chris Borland will return tomorrow, further bolstering the Badgers' excellent linebacking corps.

ASU's quarterback is Steven Threet, who Badgers fans might remember from Michigan's 3-win season (the Appalachian State year) a few years back. I'd laugh at them for it, except UM beat the Badgers that year in a game that Threet led them back from a 19 point deficit in the 4th quarter at the Big House. He's now ASU's QB and has put up a QB rating of 157 in 2 games against the perennial powerhouses North Arizona and Portland State. We'll see how they do against a credible team. For what it's worth Tolzien has put up a QB rating of 147 against the crappy opponents UW has played, so I guess it doesn't mean much. I would bet he's probably better than Tolzein.

How the Badgers win this game

What do you want to do tonight Brain this week, Bret?

The same thing we do every week - try to take over the world run the ball down their throats.

You can't really say much about ASU's run defense given their opponents so far (and the scores they ran up on them). Their defense was top rated in the Pac-10 last year, and their secondary is especially good. However, I still expect UW to run all over them.

How the Badgers lose this game
They make a few dumb mistakes early and have to rely on Tolzein's arm. As I mentioned above ASU's secondary is apparently pretty good, and Tolzein's top 2 WRs are out this week. However, I think both of them are pretty mediocre anyway (especially Gilreath) so there shouldn't be a big dropoff.

Prediction
Badgers win, 30-17

The Vegas spread is 13 points, which seems just right to me. I think Clay rushes for 2 TDs, Tolzein hooks up with Anderson for one, and Ball or White pick one up too.

Predictions in other B10 games of interest:
Iowa 27 - 17 Arizona
Notre Dame 17 - 21 MSU
USC 1,000,00 - 3 Minnesota

UNLV 21 - 41 Wisconsin

A decent start for UW. It was a classic non-conference Wisconsin game, in that they dominated the other team but still made enough mistakes to make you nervous at halftime. Tolzien threw a pick 6, and Nick Toon fumbled in the red zone, which led directly to 14 of UNLV's 21 points.

However, aside from that one bad throw Tolzien looked really good. I think I heard the phrase "game manager" half a hundred times during the broadcast, and generally when the Badgers needed a completion he and the wideouts came through. But of course, Wisconsin's calling card is the running game and holy crap did it look good. The only negative I can say about it is that they have so many great backs that Clay might not get enough carries to win the Heisman. Clay had several of his trademark runs where he was hit and then ran another 7-8 yards with a guy on his back, and Ball looked good too. But the player who impressed me the most was freshman James White, the 'speed back'. He got 11 carries and looked great, and what especially pleased me was that the Badgers put him back for a few kick returns, though from the stat sheet it looks like he didn't get a chance to run with any of them. Despite all the love the announcers were giving Gilreath I've never thought that he was an especially good returner.

The offense in general was in good form, starting from the first drive where they marched down the field, eating a ton of clock on the way (~7:30 on the opening drive). Wisconsin dominated the TOP by 17 minutes and it felt like a LOT longer.

The special teams have looked better so far, and the best news I saw all game was that Bielema is no longer coaching the special teams himself this year. There was lots of criticism in the media the past few seasons that Bielema's handling of the ST unit was weak due to his other responsibilities, but that could just be a correlation = causation fallacy.

The defense looked great, but of all the team's units I can't really say much about them until they face a real offense at ASU or MSU. Watt still looks great, and Borland looks just as dominant as he did last year. The Badgers were also all over the Rebels backfield early in the game, which was great to see. Valai got beat on one of UNLV's touchdowns but that happens sometimes (that's what the play action is for anyway). The safeties are good but I don't have any clue about the cornerbacks this year.

My memories of the second half are a lot hazier after the Badgers pushed the score up to 41. We were watching it on DVR (to skip commercials) and it was after 1 in the morning at that point, so I was nodding off. I put on the rest of the game in the morning but already knew that not much else was going to happen.

Final stats:
Total Yards: UW 475, UNLV 217
Rushing Yards: UW 278, UNLV 112
Passing Yards: UW 197, UNLV 105
Fumbles: UW 1, UNLV 1
INT: UW 1, UNLV 0
TOP: UW 38:19, UNLV 21:41