As cruel as Saturday night’s last-second 37-31 loss at Michigan State was, the Wisconsin Badgers don’t have any time to dwell on it.
That was head coach Bret Bielema’s central message to the media in his weekly Monday press conference, an indicator of UW’s mindset as it prepares to rebound from its first loss in more than nine months.
“The plane ride home was extremely quiet,” Bielema said. “The bus ride to pick up our cars and our scooters [at Camp Randall Stadium], a lot of times I’ll just have my headphones on. I popped them off a couple of different times expecting to hear some noise, and I didn’t hear anything. I think the kids really absorbed the defeat on Saturday night.”
With a daunting road trip to Columbus, Ohio, against the Ohio State Buckeyes looming Saturday, it seems Wisconsin’s best interests lie in quickly moving ahead from the heartbreaking loss to Michigan State.
With four seconds remaining in the game and the score tied at 31-31, MSU quarterback Kirk Cousins let rip a 44-yard Hail Mary into the endzone, where wide receiver Keith Nichol caught the football after it deflected off another player’s facemask. Nichol caught it at the one-yard line and fought his way in the endzone, but was ruled down at the one-yard line. After an official review, the play was called a touchdown, sending the Spartans’ sideline flooding into the field in euphoria.
“Saturday night when I got home, [the play] was on every 10 minutes on the TV that I was flipping through, so I had a lot of opportunities to watch it,” Bielema said. “We wish we could’ve done certain things better. I think every guy that was out there on the field, especially at the point of attack, wished they could do things better.
“But that’s a formation and a play that you practice every week. I’ve never seen it actually obviously happen that way. I mean, for it to hit off a guy, the facemask, and another guy’s arm and to have our guy’s arms around it is just a perfect storm to get the right results for them – obviously, not for us.”
Now, despite the fact that the Buckeyes have struggled to a 1-2 record in Big Ten play, the Badgers face a crucial matchup that once again comes on a primetime stage. For the fourth time this season – and the second in as many weeks – Wisconsin will kickoff at 7 p.m. on national television, this time on ABC. Despite its poor record, Ohio State remains a treacherous in-conference opponent, as evidenced by its 12th-ranked scoring defense (16.3 points allowed per game).
With the Leaders Division picture suddenly much cloudier – if the season ended today, Penn State would win the division, not Wisconsin – the Badgers’ ability to bounce back will likely define its season.
“I said to [the team] – I wanted everyone to hear me on this one – I said, ‘You should never get used to this feeling. This feeling should hurt; it should be in your minds. It’s something that we need to get rid of and shake out tonight. But if you ever accept it or if it becomes common for you, or you can think that this is something you can live with, then it’s going to become a habit more than you’ll ever want it to be,'” Bielema said.
