A weekend off was just what the doctor ordered for the Badger football team after their disheartening loss in Evanston two Saturdays ago. Both mentally and physically exhausted, the UW could not have stumbled onto their bye week at a better time.

“We just needed to be normal students for a week,” quarterback Jim Sorgi said Monday. “We needed to get those couple days off where after class, you can just come home and take that nap and not have to worry about going to watch film — and to wake up on Saturday and watch games instead of worrying about your own game. Mentally I think everyone is back in place and now it’s time to make a run for the stretch.”

Refreshing the team mentally and emotionally may be the bye week’s lasting impact, but for a team fighting a plague of injuries, the off time provided aching players with a bit of physical rest at a juncture of more immediate importance. “We would have really been in a tough situation at some positions because of the injuries if we had had to play last week,” head coach Barry Alvarez said.

Star tailback Anthony Davis, placekicker Mike Allen and Sorgi are all recovering from injuries, and while all may have been questionable this past weekend, Alvarez says, “according to our medical reports, all three should practice today.” From a coach who is, as a rule, overly cryptic about injury reports, such confirmation is reason for high optimism.

Alvarez was particularly positive about Sorgi’s return. “He was moving around very well when we broke on Friday morning,” he reported. “So I’ve felt pretty good about it, anticipating he’d get better over the weekend too.”

Sorgi seemed extremely relieved to be back in the grind after receiving quite a fright. “My first thought was: ‘I tore my ACL and now I’m done’ — you know, ‘I’m never going to play football again,'” the senior captain admitted.

Luckily, the popping that Sorgi felt in his knee turned out to be a complication of a prior injury to his cartilage that required surgery, but would not signal the end of his Badger career. Recovering in time for Minnesota is just a matter of willpower.

“It’s amazing [how] fast you can heal when you have to,” Sorgi said.

Davis’ return should prove equally refreshing. Lost are AD’s chances to put up huge season numbers and to compete for the Heisman Trophy, but getting back to running the way that he is capable, Alvarez said, is more important to the junior star than either of those things.

“To have that thing linger on as long as it has, and not to be able to do what he wants to do, and even when he has come back and played to not be able to put his foot in the ground like he normally would have, or have the acceleration that he’s had in the past, I think that’s more frustrating than knowing where he would be had he been able to stay healthy, and where his numbers would have been, and whether he would have been involved in any of those national awards,” Alvarez said.

Sorgi pointed out the problem that Davis’ on-again-off-again injury has created.

“When you’ve got one of your stars like AD not in there, it takes away a little bit,” he said. “Nothing against those other guys (backups Booker Stanley and Dwayne Smith). They can do the job, but with AD, he’s got that quiet presence about him, where he knows and you know he’s going to do what needs to be done.”

Alvarez agreed that Davis’s absence leaves the Badgers missing a certain element of their chemistry.

“Anthony has potential to hit a home run. He has potential to outrun an angle of a defensive back or a linebacker. Not to take anything away from those other backs, but he’s just faster than they are.”

Minnesota has played very well so far this season and is ranked in the top 25 nationally by both the coach’s and The Associated Press’ polls. The Badgers seem to be refreshed both physically and mentally, but will need all of their pieces back in place this weekend to compete with a Gopher team that has its eyes firmly set on taking back Paul Bunyan’s axe.

“I haven’t lost confidence in this team,” Alvarez said. “And the most important thing is that they haven’t lost confidence. I just want to get back to playing the way we play, play our brand of football, let the guys have a little bit of fun and play hard. We’ve got some good teams out in front of us, so you go play, compete and see what happens.”