INDIANAPOLIS – With his eyes misty and his battle-torn jersey yet to be removed, Montee Ball stood in the visitors’ locker room in the bellows of Lucas Oil Stadium, answering a third round of questions from a frenzy of reporters.

Ball faced all the usual questions – about Wisconsin’s 42-39 Big Ten title-clinching victory, his own stellar game and the scope of emotions associated with a second consecutive trip to the Rose Bowl. He even faced some about the legendary Barry Sanders, whose NCAA single-season touchdown record Ball is within one of typing at 39, tweeting his congratulations of Ball’s efforts. Ball was eight years old by the time Sanders retired and admittedly barely watched him growing up.

The entire scene, complete with players emerging from the showers with roses in their mouths, was picture-perfect for the latest blockbuster football movie. But in reality, the central theme of the Badgers’ latest triumph was simple.

Saturday night’s Big Ten Championship performance was a reflection of Wisconsin’s entire 2011 season, from its season-opening 51-17 rout of Nevada-Las Vegas to its two consecutive late-October road losses and then finally the conference championship in Indy. The similarities to the Oct. 22 nightmare against Michigan State were stunning – a rousing early start was erased by halftime, both teams suffered crucial miscues and the victor became so thanks to a series of stone-cold gut checks.

The Badgers, as they have all season long, took the best punches their opponents could pull squarely on the chin, staying alive just long enough to eventually – at the very least – make things interesting. Against Michigan State the first time around, Wisconsin endured the now-standard second-quarter surge from the Spartans, stemmed the tides of the momentum surging against it and set forth an inspired fourth-quarter effort. Nearly an identical picture unfolded the following week at Ohio State, before another last-minute miracle buoyed the opponent to victory and sent the Badgers home staggering, stunned and sad.

Saturday night, all that was different was the final result.

“I think it just comes down to a culmination of the season,” Travis Frederick, who once again started at center, said. “Our game [Saturday] just kind of described our season as a whole. Going from doing well in the beginning, hitting a couple of road bumps – second quarters – coming back strong and then finishing and being successful in the end. Just taking the season as that game, it was the perfect ending to a perfect season for us.”

Frederick might have isolated the Rose Bowl from the rest of UW’s season, calling the Big Ten title the “perfect ending” to the season. Nevertheless, his point rang true, and it echoed what senior captain and fullback Bradie Ewing said just a few minutes earlier – the fight through adversity, righting the ship after an ocean’s worth of ups and downs.

Obviously, the Badgers figured out how to stretch improved play in the fourth quarter into a victory Saturday night. In Ewing’s mind – always one to offer an honest, contextual perspective – it was more about sticking to the plan rather than any grand deviation.

“Just sticking to the plan, just sticking to what got us to this point,” Ewing said when asked about UW’s halftime adjustments. “Running the plays that we had success with in the first half and just executing. We weren’t getting four or five yards on first down, and that’s what we’ve got to do here at Wisconsin. We were able to do that more in the second half.”

Even the fact that Wilson, despite Ball’s brilliance – especially in his 105-yard, two-touchdown first quarter – won the Grange-Griffin trophy as the game’s most valuable player was emblematic of Wisconsin’s season. Wilson got his Heisman Trophy campaign first, had his first truly spectacular moments come earlier in the season. Once RussellManiaXVI was launched, Ball was the excellent backfield complement to Wilson’s greatness, which was going to carry the Badgers to the BCS promised land. Once the team’s national title hopes were dashed, Wilson’s Heisman hopes really were as well, and Ball grabbed some of the ballyhoo for himself.

Simply put, as Wilson struggled a bit with his accuracy and decision-making in those losses to Michigan State and Ohio State, it became clear Ball is the team’s best offensive player. His steadiness, his reliability as complete all-around play separated the junior running back from the senior transfer quarterback.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Wilson remains Wisconsin’s most valuable player – for what he brought to the program, and for how he transformed an already exciting 2010 offense into one of the nation’s most glorious.

“I would have been really, really upset with people if they would have handed the MVP to anyone else,” Ball said, without a twinge of shallowness in his voice.

The symbolism between this game and the entire season stretches as far as the noted alterations the Badgers made at halftime. Trailing 29-21 after two quarters, despite leading 21-7 at the end of one – UW also let a 14-0 first-quarter lead turn into a 23-14 halftime back in October – Wisconsin faced a pronounced sense of d?j? vu entering the break.

Several players mentioned UW’s senior captains and coaches speaking up to rally the Badgers at halftime, while others insisted the locker room remained calm. Cornerback Antonio Fenelus said co-defensive coordinator Chris Ash “chewed us a out a little bit” in reference to the secondary’s lackluster play, while right tackle Josh Oglesby credited senior captain and defensive tackle Patrick Butrym for a stellar halftime address.

His message?

“Just that we’re not going to leave this city with a loss,” Oglesby relayed. “We’ve put in too much work; we’ve been through too much to leave this city with a loss.”

Mike is a senior majoring in journalism. Want to share your thoughts on the Big Ten champs? Tweet @mikefiammetta and be sure to follow all the latest Badgers news @BHeraldSports.

Correction: A previous version of this story said Ball had tied Sanders’ record at 39. Ball actually has 38 touchdowns on the season, one short of the record. The mistake has been changed above and we apologize for the error.