Wisconsin Football Shows Promise Despite Loss to Ohio State

Luke Fickell and the Wisconsin Badgers football team welcomed No. 3 Ohio State to Camp Randall Stadium on Saturday.

Despite making it a closer game than most anticipated, the Badgers ultimately fell short late in the fourth quarter, losing 24-10 to Ryan Day and the Buckeyes.

Let’s take a closer look at Saturday’s home loss and finish things up by looking ahead to the Wisconsin Badgers next opponent, Indiana.

Wisconsin Football (Overall: 5-3; B1G: 3-2)

SP+ rank: Overall 27th, Offense 63rd, Defense 12th, Special Teams 15th

Previous week’s result: (L) vs. No. 3 Ohio State, 24-10.

Ohio State Thoughts: Man, I am not happy about the result of this game but I am kinda happy about (most of) the process that got us there, if that makes sense? 

I didn’t think the Wisconsin Badgers were going to beat the Buckeyes, but I definitely thought it could be close, and UW would have a chance to beat them. And, well, that’s pretty much what happened!

Wisconsin football was within a touchdown until 5:15 left in the fourth quarter and had their chances to tie things up. They just didn’t take them. 

Considering they started the second half down their top two running backs (Braelon Allen and Chez Mellusi), their starting QB (Tanner Mordecai), and their top wide receiver (Chimere Dike) and STILL marched down the field to tie things at 10 shows the type of “buy in” you want to see in Year 1 of a new coach.

Ohio State wins this like 9.5 times out of 10 but kicking FGs at the 1 and punting in plus territory when you need any chance at points you can get…not fun!

— akschaaf (@akschaaf) October 29, 2023

While not having Mellusi and Mordecai was known before kickoff, Allen and Dike each got banged up during the game and Wisconsin was still able to hang with the No. 3 Buckeyes until the bitter end. It is important to remember that there are no moral victories in big time college football, but there are “useful losses” and I think that this was one of those.

Freshman Braedyn Locke didn’t look overwhelmed by having his first career home start be a night game against an undefeated conference rival. While his stat line isn’t overly impressive (46.2% completion on 39 pass attempts isn’t anything to write home about) he was given zero help from his receivers (so many drops) and he also didn’t turn the ball over.

The Wisconsin football defense held up as well as they could, given how long they were on the field, and forced OSU’s Kyle McCord into a ton of bad decisions (two INTs, two intentional grounding penalties, four sacks, one fumble lost) while keeping the Buckeyes well under their average points per game.

The major difference, as it often is in games between these two teams, was the amount of NFL talent the Buckeyes trotted out there at wide receiver and running back. Marvin Harrison Jr. was as advertised (six catches, 123 yards, two touchdowns) and TreVeyon Henderson was back (after a month) in a big way, rushing for 162 yards on 24 carries (6.8 ypc) and scoring once while also hauling in four passes for 45 yards out of the backfield. Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s best running back had 50 yards on 10 carries before being knocked out of the game and their receivers dropped too many passes to ever be taken seriously.

I’m interested to see how the Wisconsin Badgers look in a couple of years in games like this because, if it’s more of the same, then the Luke Fickell Experiment will have clearly failed.

Phil Longo needs to tailor his offense the rest of the season to the players he has and not the ones he wishes he had. The Badgers still have a chance to win the Big Ten West, which would be a nice prize to hold everyone over while UW tries to take “the leap” and compete with Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Oregon, Washington, USC…sheesh, the Big Ten is going to be tough next year.

Sigh, another year, another loss to a beatable Buckeyes team coached by a big-time idiot loser. C’est la vie!

What’s on Deck for the Wisconsin Badgers? 

Up next: Saturday, Nov. 4, at Indiana, 11:00 a.m. CT, BTN

Indiana Thoughts: Being pals with a bunch of IU fans online has many benefits (they are funny, kind, smart) but one MAJOR drawback…I know way more than I ever wanted to about the worst thing in the world: Indiana Hoosiers football. 

This year, as is the case almost every year in recorded history, the Hoosiers are quite bad at football. Tom Allen rode his 8-4 record in 2019 to a big contract and then made IU look brilliant by finishing the 2020 COVID season at 6-1 and ranked in the top-10. You shouldn’t need any other data point outside of that one to fully understand that 2020 was a completely fake season that nothing of use can be gleaned.

Since then, Allen and Indiana are 8-24 overall (2-21 Big Ten) and somehow their Vibes are even worse. Every Indiana fan with a brain in their skull wants Allen fired because of how inept basically everything in the program is. Still, Allen’s buyout is around $20 million and Poor, Broke Indiana apparently can’t afford it (they can, IU just doesn’t care about football enough to do anything about it).

Tom Allen says they refer to the self-inflicted wounds that have plagued #iufb for much of this season as “CATs — Crimes Against the Team.”

— Seth Tow (@SethTow) October 30, 2023

The Hoosiers have two wins this season: a dominating victory over FCS Indiana State (0-8 overall, 0-5 MVFC) and a two-point, four-overtime thriller over Akron (1-7 overall, 0-4 MAC), whose only win of the season came against Morgan State (2-5 overall) by three. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Indiana is bad and can barely beat the even worse teams on their schedule.

Indiana has struggled to name a starting quarterback, alternating between freshmen Tayven Jackson (brother of Hoosier basketball great Trayce Jackson-Davis) and Brendan Sorsby. Most recently, Sorsby started against Penn State last week and almost led the Hoosiers to a hilarious upset on the road, but his impressive stat line was buoyed by a pair of long touchdowns that were because of hideous coverage busts by the Nittany Lions.

Anyways, this team is horrific and since basketball season has started no one outside of the true IU Football Perverts (again, many of whom I am pals with so I can call them that) will care about this game.

Wisconsin football should win by multiple scores no matter what their injury list looks like. Still, the Badgers are not in the business of making anything easy this year so we’ll probably have to watch until the end of the game to make sure they get the victory..

Fun Tweet of the Week I Wanted To Include Just Because

A buddy brought up a good question: how do we KNOW that’s the most pigs an FBS football player has raised? https://t.co/UHIQSEhoZy

— Basketball, no specific team, Fan (@drewhamm5) October 28, 2023

I am demanding a full NCAA investigation into this claim that Utah’s QB Bryson Barnes grew up raising the most pigs of any FBS player.

I’d wager there are multiple players in the Big Ten West alone that have raised more! WHAT ELSE IS THE MEDIA LYING TO US ABOUT?!?!

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