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The Wisconsin football team quickly dug itself into a 14-point hole Saturday against Marshall. Monday, head coach Bret Bielema attributed much of that to his players being overly excited to take on their opponents from Conference USA.

“Marshall did some good things and were able to capitalize on it,” Bielema said in his weekly press conference. “We definitely took a life lesson forward. In retrospect, our guys may have been overly hyped up; they really wanted to do well. The very first penalty was Daven Jones on a push after the play. I doubt we’ll have that issue again.”

He also sees it as a positive for the future.

“What [we] were able to do was not start off on the greatest of terms [on] offense, defense and special teams,” the coach continued. “It reminded me a lot of our game against Illinois two years ago, my first season [as head coach]. We were down 17 points in that game and were able to come back. [Saturday] showed me the same resiliency that they displayed in that game and how that propelled us later into the season that year.”

The Badgers did not lose a game following that 2006 victory over the Illini en route to finishing the season 12-1.

Game balls go to…

Quarterback Allan Evridge’s 308-yard passing performance Saturday was enough for him to receive accolades from his coaching staff, but the other game balls went to some less familiar faces.

With two interceptions against Marshall, sophomore cornerback Niles Brinkley split the defensive honor with middle linebacker Jaevery McFadden, who now has 20 total tackles in his first two starts.

“I knew he’d be productive,” Bielema said of McFadden. “Your middle linebacker is a guy who you hope has the most tackles, just because he should be in a position to make more plays from sideline to sideline. Jaevery is still working on the finer points of that position, but he is active, he is fast and that allows him to make a lot of plays.”

Junior Prince Moody gathered the recognition for his hard work on special teams.

“[Prince is] a guy that can really run,” Bielema said of the Columbus, Ohio native. “He plays [cornerback] but hasn’t been able to develop what we need to there, but because of his athletic ability, we felt he could be a good special teams player for us and really was evolving into that last year, but pulled his hammy. He’s been relatively injury-free, and he’s made two big plays (one in each game) in the kicking game on punt coverage [this season].”

The fountain of youth

In only two games thus far, nine true freshmen (Brendan Kelly, Brady Ewing, Brad Nortman, Antonio Fenelus, Kevin Claxton, Devin Smith, Kevin Zeitler, Jake Current and Jake Byrne) have seen playing time, seven of whom have started on two or more special teams units. In addition, seven redshirt freshmen (Patrick Butrym, Josh Oglesby, Nick Toon, Mario Goins, John Clay, Philip Welch and Louis Nzegwu) have seen the field.

“There is a learning curve we’ve got to go through,” Bielema noted. “But for me as a head coach, we’re a senior-dominated team; we’ve got a lot of seniors playing for us. But the exciting part is, those are 16 guys that are playing for the first time and getting some pretty good reps.”

Injury updates

The Badgers have been without arguably their biggest playmakers on both sides of the ball: senior tight end Travis Beckum and senior outside linebacker Jonathan Casillas. Both seem on the verge of playing Saturday at No. 21 Fresno State.

“Travis practiced all yesterday and really felt that he was just a couple days away last week,” Bielema said. “I saw him in the training room [Monday] morning, and he was all excited about the way he felt.”

Casillas practiced Sunday and was cleared for full participation for today’s practice.