The score of the game may indicate otherwise, but Wisconsin’s defense actually played pretty well against UNLV last weekend.
Despite being put into a number of compromising positions by Jim Sorgi and the Badger offense, Jeff Mack and company managed to keep the Rebels out of the end zone on 12 of their 14 possessions and gave up fewer than 200 yards of total offense.
“We really had our backs against the wall going into the UNLV game and thought that we really needed to play well,” Badger safety Jim Leonhard said. “We were back in a hole a lot, and we felt that other than a couple plays we played pretty decent football.”
Compared to the effort they put forth against Akron a week earlier, UW’s defensive performance in the UNLV game was much better than “decent”; the Badgers gave up four touchdowns and a whopping 534 yards in total offense in their Sept. 6 matchup with the Zips.
According to Leonhard, however, the Badgers are now better prepared to play pass-oriented offenses like Akron’s.
“Definitely any time you see a team like Akron, they have a really highly developed passing game … it’s going to help you out that much more later in the season,” Leonhard said. “We’re going to take some of the stuff that’s carried over from that game, get back to the fundamentals and just play football. We feel like the coaches will give us a good plan and take care of what they do. We just have to go out there and execute.”
This week the Badgers will once again be faced with a tough pass-oriented offense, as Wisconsin is set to square off against quarterback Darian Durant and the North Carolina Tar Heels.
Through UNC’s first two games, Durant, who is on pace to eclipse every UNC career passing record in 2003, has already thrown four touchdown passes and compiled 551 yards of total offense.
UW senior middle linebacker Jeff Mack, who led the team with nine tackles against UNLV, feels Wisconsin is ready for the challenge, though.
“We have a game with a passing-oriented offense (Akron) under our belt now,” Mack said. “With that being so, we now know how to play teams like that, and we’ll have better knowledge and better instincts going into this weekend’s game (against North Carolina).”
The Badgers’ defense has improved in a number of areas this season, but Mack does not feel that the unit is as good as it wants to be quite yet.
“We’re still working on getting to where we need to be,” Mack said. “Of course we’ve made strides at times. But as [Coach Alvarez] has talked about before, we need to become more consistent — make sure we’re playing four quarters in every game.”
Leonhard, like Mack, feels that UW’s defense has improved this season, and he thinks they are on the verge of putting it all together.
“I think we’re close (to where we want to be),” Leonhard said. “At times we’ve shown that we can be a great defense, and then at times we just haven’t played well at all … we feel like if we just get back to the fundamentals and execute the defense that’s called, we can be a great defense.”
Mack and Leonhard will be looking to take another step toward becoming the great defense they want to be this Saturday.
After last week’s 23-5 thumping, they are especially anxious to get back on the field and show everyone the type of team they can really be.
“You’ve got that bad taste in your mouth; nobody wants to go out and perform like that,” Leonhard said. “Everyone’s just really itching to get back out on the field and to show everyone that we are a better team. That really shouldn’t happen to us again.”
“I talked to a lot of our guys. We just want to get back on the field right away,” Mack added. “We didn’t like the way the (UNLV) game turned out, but sometimes games are like that: where nothing goes your way. The best thing about college football is ‘you got another game.'”
