Badgers Escape Vegas

After being rather thoroughly outplayed for the better part of the football game, the Wisconsin Badgers finally did in the final ten minutes what they should have been doing all night. They imposed their will on heavy underdog UNLV, escaping Las Vegas with a 20-13 non-conference win.

Senior quarterback Tyler Donovan's 29-yard scamper down the left sideline with 1:53 left capped a ten-play, 61-yard drive to give Wisconsin the lead for good. Donovan threw a pass to Luke Swan for the two-point conversion.

Wisconsin's defense then shut down UNLV in five plays, sacking Travis Dixon twice, and Donovan closed the night with two kneel-downs. Wisconsin is 2-0, and thanks to earlier college football craziness, the Badgers now own the nation's longest winning streak at 11.

While the end of the game was good for Wisconsin, the rest of it was uneven at best, and completely ugly at its worst. The Badgers struggled to make any big plays offensively, and they couldn't sustain many drives. The defense played a bend-but-don't-break style against UNLV's spread offense, which would have been nice had it not cost UW valuable field position most of the night. The Rebels put together a 14-play, 80-yard touchdown drive in the first quarter to take a 7-0 lead, then strung together two more long drives to set up field goals. While the running game struggled to find holes, Dixon picked the Badgers' vaunted secondary apart most of the night, throwing for 258 yards.


It appeared UNLV wanted to attack that secondary, especially cornerback Allen Langford, who didn't give up much deep but was burned repeatedly on short passes. Watching the game, it was hard to understand why Wisconsin didn't shift their personnel a little more often. Instead of getting extra defensive backs on the field, UW often relied on man-to-man coverage on the outside. Because of that, we didn't hear the name "Jack Ikegwuonu" very much, but Langford was getting picked on every series.

(Actually, come to think of it, I'm guessing we didn't hear the name "Ikegwuonu" that much because the guys calling the game on Versus didn't appear easily capable of pronouncing it. That's a sour subject with me, but let's just say that I'm glad Wisconsin won't be appearing on Versus again anytime soon. That was not an experience I'm looking forward to repeating.)

Wisconsin's offense, as I mentioned, was void of any big plays against a UNLV defense that appears at least somewhat improved from what I saw from them last year. Donovan's late touchdown run was the longest play of the night for the Badgers' offense.

For now, it stands to reason that Badger fans will have to live with a fall in the national rankings. I'm thinking the voters won't take too well to a near-miss against a UNLV team that won twice last year and barely beat hapless Utah State last week. In the future, Wisconsin is going to have to play much better than this to be considered a national title threat.

Speaking of "national title", I know you're wondering, and yes, even national championship winners do occasionally get scares from lesser opponents. The 2004 USC Trojans needed a furious rally to beat Stanford, and the 2006 Florida Gators barely got by Vanderbilt and Florida State (14 losses between them last year).