IOWA CITY, Iowa — For the first time in 26 months, the Wisconsin football team won a game that was decided by less than seven points and it was the play of the quarterback – or quarterbacks – that got the job done for the Badgers.
Both redshirt juniors Joel Stave and Tanner McEvoy were crucial, and played arguably their best games of the season, in No. 16 Wisconsin’s 26-24 defeat of the Iowa Hawkeyes Saturday that now sets up a winner-take-all game against Minnesota next weekend for the Big Ten West title.
Stave made the biggest play of the game Saturday for UW, and in an unexpected turn of events, it came on the ground.
With 2:05 left on the clock in the fourth quarter and Iowa down just 26-24, the Badgers faced a 3rd-and-8 from their own 38 yard line. The Hawkeyes had one timeout remaining and a stop on third down would have given them the ball back with one last chance to try to comeback and defeat UW.
However, Stave dropped back to pass but with good coverage down field, he decided to keep it after seeing the Iowa linebacker go with Melvin Gordon, leaving the field open as he scampered for a 12-yard run and a first down that sealed the game for UW. It was Stave’s only run of the game and the 12-yard run was a season-high for the redshirt junior who now has just eight rushes for negative 16 yards this season.
“I think I’m maybe a better athlete than I get credit for,” Stave said. “I’ve just got to [run] when I can and that was a really big situation to basically take it down and run.”
But as expected, it was McEvoy who led the two quarterbacks in rushing Saturday as he has been all season. McEvoy was effective on the ground rushing six times for 62 yards with a 45-yard touchdown run in the second quarter that put Wisconsin up 9-3.
The touchdown came on a read option with Gordon but McEvoy kept it, fooling the Hawkeye defense and the majority of the 68,610 in attendance at Kinnick Stadium, as McEvoy ran untouched down the field for UW’s first touchdown of the game.
“It’s starting to become a pattern where the defense goes for Melvin and I’m kind of untouched up the middle,” McEvoy said. “It’s great to have Melvin as kind of a decoy, but it was great, well-blocked and it was kind of just an untouched touchdown.”
While McEvoy was effective on the ground, Stave had one of his most efficient games at quarterback of the season. While he only threw for 139 yards, Stave finished the game 11-for-14 with no interceptions.
But perhaps the most important part of Stave’s performance Saturday was that he was 4-for-5 for 67 yards on third down.
Other than his 12-yard run for a first down at the end of the game, his most crucial third down conversion came earlier in the fourth quarter. After an Iowa touchdown pulled the Hawkeyes within two at 19-17, Stave avoided a blitz from the Hawkeye defense and completed a pivotal 3rd-and-13 pass to Gordon who slipped out of the backfield and took the pass 35 yards down to the Iowa 33 yard line. Two plays later, Gordon scored on a 23-yard touchdown run in what would turn out to be the game-winning score for the Badgers.
“That was something we worked on throughout the week in practice,” Stave said of the third down completion to Gordon. “We saw [Iowa] do [the blitz] on film a number of times and we just knew that if we saw it again we’d be ready for it.”
Prior to the two third down conversions in the fourth quarter, both Stave and McEvoy converted on third downs in an important drive back in the second quarter that ended in another Wisconsin touchdown. First, McEvoy ran left for six yards to pick up a 3rd-and-5 before Stave hit tight end redshirt freshman Troy Fumagalli for 12 yards to convert on a 3rd-and-8.
A few plays later Stave found his other tight end, senior Sam Arneson, for 13 yards to move the chains on 3rd-and-11 that put Wisconsin down to the Iowa 13 yard line. Gordon found the end zone for his first touchdown of the game just two plays later and the Badgers took a 16-3 lead.
While Stave certainly did not put up flashy numbers yard-wise Saturday, he has now thrown only one interception in his last six games while finding a way to get it done on third down which is something that could pay dividends next week in the biggest game of the season for the Badgers.
“I think that’s huge for us,” Stave said of converting on third down. “That’s something we talk about every Saturday morning. Go over our third down calls, looks that we like, pressures that we have to expect because if we’re converting third downs, we’re a very tough team to stop.”
