20-3 is certainly a one-sided score. Yet the score alone does little to measure the two teams that competed in Wisconsin’s loss to Iowa. UW was totally dominated for three quarters of the game by an Iowa team that was, by all accounts, as impressive a team as the Badgers have faced, this year or last.

“They were a very good football team, and they were ready to play today,” said corner Scott Starks. “I believe they are [the best team we’ve played], I think they were. They were the best all-around team we have played so far.”

Coaches and players said that Iowa had no real weakness. They said that Iowa was a complete team comprised of veteran players. Wisconsin, on the other hand, is a team that is anything but veteran, as its games against top-notch opponents made of battle-tested players have shown.

At one point Saturday Wisconsin had an offensive unit on the field that featured freshmen at flanker, split end, tailback, right guard and quarterback. A total of seven freshmen have been asked to be contributing members of the Badgers offensive unit.

The group began the season with a bang, picking up five wins. Many around the nation began to believe that the Badgers could be a factor in the Big Ten race despite an incredible lack of experience.

As the season has played out, the Badgers have lost three of their last four games, struggling to put up points all along the way. The problem came to a head against the Big Ten’s best defense Saturday, where the Badgers looked totally ineffective on offense.

The flip side is that these young players have shown tremendous skill and promise. Promise may win Big Ten games in the future, but promise does not win games against top-ten opponents this season.

A look at the Badger roster will show you that the team has only 26 juniors and seniors on the team. Looking closer you see that only 19 of the 26 are listed as first or second on the UW depth chart at their position, and two of those players are junior college transfers, essentially making them true freshmen in the UW system.

Even so, the hands-down best player on the field Saturday for Wisconsin was one of the two JUCO transfers, Alex Lewis. Lewis started his first game at middle linebacker and tallied 12 total tackles, including four tackles for loss. Without him, the Badgers may not have been able to stop Brad Banks on the scramble at all.

The level of contribution that Wisconsin has had from its upperclassmen has been disappointing. Strangely, this group of upperclassmen was brought into the program during some of its winningest years — years in which UW coaches should have been able to take their level of recruiting up a notch rather than digressing.

Ryan Aiello and Erasmus James are the only true juniors recruited as high school players that are steady contributors for the Wisconsin program.

The search for answers to the Badgers’ slide this season does not need to go much further than a look at the depth chart. Wisconsin is simply a young football team, a team whose youth is talented but becomes exposed when playing high-caliber teams.

Playing so many freshmen is not something that works in college football. While high school athletes may be ready to become college basketball stars or even NBA players on a regular basis, it is very rare that a football freshman is ready to play on a high enough level immediately.

What can the Badgers do? Right now, not much except stay positive and continue to develop their younger players while hoping to avoid future recruiting disasters. Surely the Shoebox Scandal and the loss of scholarships is currently affecting the Badgers negatively and will continue to do so for several years.

It is unknown whether taking defeats to good Big Ten teams such as Penn State, Ohio State and now Iowa will pay future dividends for these Wisconsin youngsters, but the Badgers knew they would be in a position where they would need contributions from freshmen this season. Perhaps they did not know they would need quite this much.

While the young players may not have experience, they also don’t take losing in the same way that a senior-laden team would take it. They get up and just want to keep learning and getting better. For a young team, hope is not lost.

At 1-4 in the Big Ten, coming off his first start and learning how to play Big Ten football each day, Alex Lewis perhaps personifies the attitude that this young team still has despite the loss.

“We have to get better each week. We’re not out of it yet. We are not hanging our heads. We still have our heads high.”