Wisconsin football head coach Bret Bielema said Monday he was impressed by his team's second-half play against Minnesota, but added Wisconsin will not underestimate their next opponent, Cal Poly.
There were some good examples of guys thinking and reacting the right way to get us a 'W,'"" Bielema said of the win, which secured Paul Bunyan's Axe for another year.
He pointed out the team's response at halftime, when the Badgers trailed 21-7, and complimented their effort.
""To have the resiliency that they did, to come out the way they did and ultimately win the game says a lot about who they are,"" he said.
Although the Badgers' Big Ten conference schedule is complete, Bielema said they are expecting a tough matchup against the Cal Poly Mustangs, currently ranked No. 3 in the Football Championship Subdivision, whom he called ""a tremendous football team.""
Bielema believes the Mustangs' unique play will be hard to contain.
""Their offense is not similar to anything we've seen,"" he said. ""It's the speed they attack you with. They try to keep everything fast-paced and [go] a million different directions at any given time.""
The Cal Poly style is so foreign that Bielema admitted he, ""YouTubed them, because I didn't know a lot about their offense.""
Senior wide receiver Ramses Barden helps lead the Mustang offense and could go in the first round in the NFL draft.
""He is thick, he is aggressive, he goes up and gets the football ... [he is] a phenomenal football player,"" Bielema said of Barden.
Bielema read a quote from Barden, who said earlier in the week that the Wisconsin-Cal Poly matchup was ""our Appalachian State,"" referring to the FCS team's 2007 upset of Michigan.
The Badgers will be especially eager to avoid such an upset Saturday as, it is the final college home game for Wisconsin's seniors.
Nine starters, including defensive linemen Mike Newkirk and Matt Shaughnessy and linebackers DeAndre Levy and Jonathan Casillas, will play for the last time in Camp Randall Stadium. Bielema said it will be hard to see them
go.
""You miss all seniors,"" he said. ""All these guys have stories within stories, personally with me and then also obviously the things you've seen out there on gameday. So they'll be missed.""
Saturday's win against Minnesota means Wisconsin's seniors will most likely have at least one more game to play at the college level, as the Badgers are now eligible for a postseason bowl game.
Although they will not play in as prestigious a bowl as many thought they would at the start of the season, Bielema says bowl eligibility ""means a lot.""
""We definitely had expectations coming into this year to have more victories than we do at this point in the season,"" he said. ""But [the] bottom line is we scraped and put ourselves in a position to be bowl-eligible, and what we do this Saturday has a lot to do with what we
can do in the future.""
