Wisconsin vs. Purdue The Badgers started off their post-bye week stretch with a convincing 37-0 shutout of the Purdue Boilermakers. With the win, the Badgers returned to the BCS rankings, at # 21, the USA Today/Coaches’ Poll at #22 and the AP poll at #24. John Clay tied a career-high with three touchdowns in the game. Junior tight end Lance Kendricks also had a good game. While he previously had zero rushing attempts in his career, he carried the ball four times for 91 yards, including a 54-yard run in the third quarter that set up a Clay touchdown. Kendricks also had two catches for 21 yards, giving him 112 all-purpose yards. On the defensive side of things, true freshman linebacker Chris Borland, who started for the first time in his career with the Badgers, was named Big Ten Co-Defensive Player of the Week. He recovered two fumbles, forced another and made four tackles. Borland is the first Wisconsin player since Jim Leonhard to be named both Big Ten Defensive and Special Teams Player in the same season. Freshman defensive end David Gilbert celebrated his 18th birthday by blocking a punt that resulted in a Badger touchdown (if you’re thinking that it seems late in the school year to be celebrating an 18th birthday, you’ll be surprised to learn that Gilbert actually started classes in January 2009, just two months after his 17th birthday, after graduating a semester early from high school). Gilbert, at 6’4” and 234 pounds, made the decision to leap over the 6-foot-6, 292-pound Purdue defender after realizing it wasn’t going to be too easy to go through him. It paid off, and Gilbert managed to pull off “a Borland”, referring to the leap made by Chris Borland to block a punt during the Wofford game. With the win, Wisconsin became bowl eligible for a school-record 8th consecutive season. The Badgers’ current streak of seven straight bowl appearances is the second-longest in the Big Ten (behind Ohio State – 9) and tied for the 13th-longest in the country. The Badgers currently lead the Big Ten in rushing offense and rushing defense in conference games. The only time in school history UW has led the league in both categories (conference games only) was in 1951. The last time any team led the league in both categories was Ohio State in 1996. UW vs Indiana This Saturday the Badgers (6-2, 3-2) take on the Indiana Hoosiers (4-5, 1-4) in Bloomington. The game starts at noon and will only be shown on the Big Ten Network, so why not join as at Rookies to watch the game? UW has won 10 of the last 12 meetings between the teams, including the last four in a row. Over those 12 games, the two teams have combined to average 61.6 points per game and the winning team has scored at least 50 points in five of those games. Indiana comes off a disappointing loss to Iowa, after leading the Hawkeyes by 14 and suffering through some bad officiating, including a reversal of a touchdown call based on the replay review. The bad officiating even led to allegations of a BCS conspiracy (i.e., that the top schools appear to be getting BCS protection from officials because it's in the best interest of the conferences for the best teams to win. A conference advancing a team to the national-title game brings huge exposure and revenue to the school and the league, and a second team in the BCS means an additional $4.5 million to conference coffers – see http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-dufresne2-2009nov02,0,2448913.column?track=rss). The Hawkeyes came back with four scoring drives in the fourth quarter to ultimately defeat the Hoosiers 42-24. The previous week, the Hoosiers led the Northwestern Wildcats by 25 points, but ended up losing on a late field goal by Northwester. So Indiana will be anxious to get back on its feet this week against the Badgers. Badgers in the NFL Matt Shaughnessy, a Connecticut native, replaced an injured Ellis and had the second-highest number of tackles for Oakland in their loss to San Diego this past weekend. Owen Daniels, who had been playing well for the Texans, suffered a season-ending knee injury (torn ACL) against Buffalo. The Chargers waived Chris Chambers, but Kansas City has put in a waiver claim on him. And for those of you who are Jim Leonhard fans, there was another good article about him recently in Newsday. The article starts out with: The first time Bart Scott laid eyes on Jim Leonhard walking around the Ravens' training facility in the Baltimore suburbs, he was certain the guy with the boyish looks and diminutive frame wasn't one of his teammates. "I thought he was the accountant," the linebacker said." To read the rest, go to: Edit |
