The Wisconsin football team will begin the Big Ten season on the road Saturday when it travels to Evanston to face Northwestern, following the Badgers’ 27-10 win over South Florida in their final non-conference game.
While acknowledging there are still areas where his team must improve, Badgers head coach Gary Andersen said he has been pleased with how his young team has competed as it heads into the conference season.
“I like this team. I like the way they deal with adversity,” Andersen said at his Monday news conference. “You worry greatly about a team that is as youthful as they are and the lack of numbers in the senior leadership role, but I’m highly impressed with the way they have hung in there.”
Wisconsin handled much of that adversity in last week’s battle against South Florida, as the heavily favored Badgers got off to a slow start and were tied at three with USF at halftime. In the final 30 minutes, the offense got back on track and scored 24 points to win by more than two touchdowns.
Andersen credited star running back Melvin Gordon, who finished the game with 181 yards and two touchdowns, with remaining calm when the Badgers were struggling and acting as one of the leaders on the field.
“[It] could have been real easy when you’ve got Melvin Gordon taking a handoff on the two-yard line and he gets smacked in the backfield,” Andersen said. “You didn’t see him get up and point fingers again. You saw him get up and deal with it and we moved on and we played the next snap when we had the opportunity to.”
After a breakout performance by Wisconsin’s passing attack in game two of the season against Western Illinois, quarterback Tanner McEvoy has not had the same success through the air in the last two games, including Saturday against South Florida. McEvoy threw for 160 yards and had trouble multiple times getting the snap from center Dan Voltz.
Andersen said that he liked a lot of what he saw from McEvoy on Saturday, but that he and his staff will continue to try to help McEvoy get in a rhythm and feel more comfortable in the pocket.
“There’s some opportunities to get Tanner involved in high-percentage throws hopefully early on, and that’s something that we’ll look at and we’ll see,” Andersen said. “There’s a lot good things to see, but there’s things we need to get better at.”
The Badger defense held down the fort Saturday while the offense was still figuring things out, holding South Florida to just 10 points and putting together yet another solid overall performance. Andersen said he likes what he’s seen defensively, but becoming great will require playing this well consistently.
“We expect to play great defense,” Andersen said. “I would never say I’m overly surprised, but I’m happy with where they sit at this point, and if they can sustain that and maintain that for 12 regular season games, they will be a special defense.”
This Saturday at Northwestern, the defense will get a chance to keep building toward that goal, as they will be heavily counted on in order to beat the Wildcats, who are coming off an impressive win 29-6 over Penn State.
Especially after their strong performance last week, Andersen will not be overlooking the Badger’s opening Big Ten opponent.
“They were able to throw the ball. They got big plays when they needed it from the offense and defense. The special teams was very solid,” Andersen said. “So if that doesn’t catch your eye and understand that this is a very, very good football team, then you don’t know football very well.”
Northwestern is also the first opponent Andersen will face for the second time as Wisconsin’s head coach, which Andersen expects to be a helpful thing when preparing for the Wildcats.
“It gives you a little bit better feel of who they are, the size of their team,” Andersen explained. “And what they do live is always a little bit different than what they do on tape.”
Although the Wildcats lost seven of their last eight games to finish last season and have started this year off .500, they have posed a difficult challenge for UW on their home turf. The last time the Badgers won in Evanston was 1999, losing their last three games at Ryan Field.
In addition to Northwestern, Andersen said that the Badgers are expecting every Big Ten game to be a battle, and the conference slate will require his team to compete hard every week in order to reach Indianapolis for the conference championship.
“Especially with what I’ve learned in one year of the Big Ten, you had better have yourself ready every single week because it’s going to be competitive, and it’s going to be physical, and your opponent is very well coached,” Andersen said.
