After coming up with one of the most significant wins in school history against Ohio State and suffering a heartbreaking loss to Purdue a week later, the UW football team’s physical and emotional tank ran empty in Evanston Saturday.
In Lee Evans’ words, the Badgers were simply “out-hit” and “out-toughed” by the notoriously soft Northwestern Wildcats, and UW “just didn’t play very well.”
Among other things, Wisconsin will use the upcoming bye week to just get refocused on what it needs to do to pick up a victory in its next game.
“I think the bye week has come at a good time,” Evans said. “We’re coming off two tough losses, and we need this time now just to focus on what we need to do to go out the following week (against Minnesota) and get a win.”
Although a team would ideally like to head into a bye week after a win, the time off will allow the Badgers to address some of the issues that have plagued them over the course of the past two weeks. According to Brian White, UW’s offensive coordinator and running-back coach, the Badgers will focus on trying to remedy those issues, as well as getting geared up for the final three games of the regular season.
“I can promise you that on a bye week, it’s always better to go into [it] off of a win,” White said. “But that’s not the case, so we need to address some obvious issues that need to be corrected … we need to take advantage of it and get rested and push hard for three weeks.”
In addition to getting refocused and addressing the past two weeks’ problematic areas, the Badgers will also use the bye week to just get some much-needed rest, according to UW sophomore wideout Brandon Williams.
“I’m looking forward to this bye week so we can realign our focus,” Williams said. “We just need to get back our focus and get some guys healthy. And we’ve been playing for nine-straight weeks, where if you include camp, 12-straight weeks, so we need some rest.”
And that rest couldn’t come at a better time for Wisconsin. Last week the Badgers played without their starting place kicker Mike Allen, quarterback Jim Sorgi and running back Anthony Davis, due to injury. Without three of its most instrumental players in the lineup, UW’s offensive attack struggled to find any consistency Saturday and only managed to tally seven points against an otherwise suspect Wildcat defense.
“We need this (week off). We need this to recharge,” UW head coach Barry Alvarez said. “We need it to get some guys healthy; we’re a battered football team. So this week will come in handy for the stretch run.”
“I wish I could get right back out there,” added UW senior linebacker Jeff Mack. “But I’m glad we have a bye week right now so we can heal up and just recoop.”
Although the likelihood of the Badgers winning a Big Ten Championship has taken a slide due to their performances in the last two weeks, according to UW free safety Jim Leonhard, a trip to Pasadena is still UW’s No. 1 goal, and it will use the bye week to get refocused and finish the regular season on a good note.
“The guys on this team are really focused, and we’ve got one goal. We want to win the Big Ten, and something’s got to happen now,” Leonhard said. “We’re going to be really focused … and we’re going to go into this bye week and just figure our stuff out.”
UW backup quarterback Matt Schabert, like Leonhard, considers a conference title to still be within reach and is looking forward to the time off this week.
“I think everybody is ready for the week off; it’s a well-welcomed thing,” Schabert said. “I think everybody is going to take this week to get an extra week of head start on Minnesota. Everybody is going to sit around and relax and get their legs under them. But I think when we come back, we’ll be raring to go; everybody will have a big type of fire to win the Big Ten Championship.”
