Gameday: Five things to watch
By Thomas Valtin-Erwin | Nov. 20, 20141. Is Joel Stave the final answer at quarterback?
1. Is Joel Stave the final answer at quarterback?
Usually as a season progresses, teams become more predictable, falling into patterns of play where, on a week-to-week basis, fans and opponents know what to expect. In the case of the Iowa Hawkeyes, that is far from the truth.
This is the 10th edition (hooray, double digits!) of the Heisman Watch, a weekly feature tracking the candidates for college football’s most prestigious award. For last week’s rankings, click here.
Thanks to Wisconsin’s, to put it politely, bulldozing of Nebraska, we now have a clear pitcure of what the Big Ten championship will look like. Ohio State has the East effectively sewn up and the Badgers continue to control their destiny, but now with some brand new safety cushions.
No. 12 Kansas State at West Virginia
As the Badgers catch their breath after Melvin Gordon’s record-breaking afternoon against Nebraska, they now turn their attention to Iowa and what will be a heated Big Ten West race to the conference championship.
Trying to tackle Melvin Gordon could have felt like being hit by a car to Nebraska players, but one Nebraska fan felt that all too literally.
No. 22 Wisconsin thrashed No. 11 Nebraska, 59-24, by way of a record-setting rushing performance from Melvin Gordon Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium.
No. 1 Mississippi State at No. 4 Alabama
As we venture into Week 12 of the 2014 college football season, the Nebraska Cornhuskers find themselves atop the Big Ten West division standings posting an 8-1 record, with their only blemish being a road loss at Michigan State. Coming off of a bye week, the No. 13 Cornhuskers will travel to Camp Randall energized to play a game that may have Playoff implications for the team.
In a matchup full of conference championship implications, No. 11 Nebraska heads to Camp Randall Saturday to face No. 22 Wisconsin for supremacy in the Big Ten West.
Referee Jerome Boger says he’s looking forward to officiating his family’s annual Thanksgiving touch football game this year.
Hail Ohio State, new undisputed kings of the Big Ten. The Buckeyes have the inside track to the Big Ten championship and aren’t entirely eliminated from the College Football Playoff (although it’s going to require some very specific sequences of events to get them in). Now, we move onto the game that will likely decide the West.
This is the ninth edition of the Heisman Watch, a weekly feature tracking the candidates for college football’s most prestigious award. For last week’s rankings, click here.
As fall camp wound to a close and Wisconsin prepared for its season opener against LSU, only the quarterback battle between Joel Stave and Tanner McEvoy remained to be decided.
Football
Showing no signs of looking ahead to next week’s divisional showdown with Nebraska, No. 25 Wisconsin rolled to a 34-16 victory over Purdue Saturday in West Lafayette, Indiana.
This would be the calm before the storm in the Big Ten, as division supremacy will reveal itself in the next two weeks, Ohio State vs. Michigan State and Nebraska vs. Wisconsin.
1. Impenetrable defense