After their latest underwhelming victory, Michigan State has fallen from its perch in the Big Ten power rankings. A big week lies ahead for the conference, as four of the teams in this week’s power rankings square off against one another.
1. Gaglianone the great?
What a wild week of college football. Of the 20 ranked teams that played this week, five won by just one score and three more lost to unranked teams. No. 10 Alabama struggled mightily against 2-4 Arkansas before pulling away in the fourth quarter, while No. 1 Ohio State got everything they could handle from Maryland.
This Sunday will mark the 12-year anniversary of the last time Purdue (0-2 Big Ten, 1-5 overall) beat Wisconsin (1-1, 4-2). It isn’t easy to find many people who think that streak will end when the two teams play Saturday. The Boilermakers’ season has been a bit of a mess, as their only win came Week 2 against the Indiana State Sycamores, and despite giving Michigan State a scare in their fifth game, their 13-41 loss to Minnesota last week was a microcosm of their season as a whole.
LINCOLN, Neb. — Since Nebraska joined the Big Ten in 2011, the Huskers and Badgers have had a number of high-stakes contests that have led to a budding rivalry between Big Ten powers, and this week’s battle for the Freedom Trophy was no different.
Even with the offense totaling 320 yards and possessing the football for more than half the game, the Badgers struggled to form any semblance of a rhythm in their 10-6 loss to No. 22 Iowa last Saturday. But the defense, led by senior outside linebacker Joe Schobert, held an Iowa team that scored 62 points in its win against the University of North Texas to a mere 10 points, all off turnovers. The defense surrendered just 30 yards total on both Iowa possessions that yielded points. Schobert came into Week 5 with an FBS-high 9.5 tackles-for-loss and continued to build on that total, adding four additional tackles-for-loss.
1. Protecting the ball A yard shy from punching the football into the end zone and taking a late fourth quarter lead against Iowa, redshirt senior quarterback Joel Stave tripped over redshirt freshman right guard Micah Kapoi and fumbled the ball, gifting the Hawkeyes possession and the game as a result. The botched handoff, however, was the most colossal turnover in a game defined by carelessness with the football.
Defense wins championships. It’s an old adage, but one that has withstood the test of time. Over the past decade, ignoring Auburn’s sieve of a defense in 2010, NCAA Championship teams have had, on average, the fifth-best defense in the country.
All throughout preparation during Iowa week, the idea repeated ad nauseam was that the Big Ten is all about physical football.
In movies and TV shows, high schools often feature two stereotypes: band nerds and jocks. Dan Voltz would have been the character that defies the societal norms, a Troy Bolton-esque protagonist that excels athletically and musically. Maybe he’s not exactly like Zac Efron’s character from “High School Musical,” but Voltz has a love for both music and football.
The first full week of conference action is in the books for the Big Ten, and everybody has been left with a whole slew of new questions regarding the state of the conference.
With nine minutes left in the third quarter, No. 1 Ohio State, the defending national champions, found itself trailing Indiana 10-6.
Before Hall of Famer Barry Alvarez built the football house known as Camp Randall, he was a Cornhusker. In fact, Alvarez was the leading tackler for Nebraska during the 1967 season in Lincoln. Alvarez credits much of his success building the Wisconsin football program to the practices and values that he learned in his time at Nebraska.
Wisconsin’s senior tight end Austin Traylor, who expanded his role in the offense this season, will be out 4-8 weeks with a right arm injury, as first reported Thursday morning by the Wisconsin State Journal’s Jason Galloway. Traylor left in the second half of UW’s 10-6 loss to Iowa last Saturday and did not return. Traylor entered the year with only three career receptions, but this season he had caught ten before his injury.
When a football game is described as a battle in the trenches, usually it refers to ground and pound football that is won and lost based on which team’s line can get the stronger push up front. When Wisconsin (0-1 Big Ten, 3-2 overall) takes on Nebraska (0-1, 2-3) this weekend, it won’t be a traditional trench war, but the game will hinge on the performances of both team’s big men on the line of scrimmage.
As the leaves of the trees continue to change, the Wisconsin football season rolls on. The temperatures are slowly starting to drop, a source of dread for students everywhere. But for junior Sojourn Shelton, who hails from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, the seasons of Madison were a welcome change.
With a combined 431 yards of total offense, junior quarterback Tommy Armstrong Jr. led the Nebraska Cornhuskers to a much needed 36-28 win over Southern Miss last Saturday.
There’s no change in this week’s power rankings, though Ohio State closed the gap between itself and the Michigan State Spartans. The week was fairly solid for the Big Ten as a majority of its teams wrapped up their non-conference schedules and now turn their attention to the start of Big Ten play.
Like him or not, Wisconsin was an excellent football program when Bret Bielema was at the helm. And it was like that for far longer than those who just want to give credit to Barry Alvarez’s program-building skills would like.
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