[media-credit name=’RAY PFEIFFER/Herald Photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]A sloppy game offensively? Sure. A defensive gem? Absolutely. Another ugly win for Wisconsin? You bet.

Whatever the case, the Badgers took care of business in ensuring another 3-0 record coming into the Big Ten season with a 14-0 home victory over the San Diego State Aztecs Saturday.

This marks the third consecutive season in which UW has opened with a trio of non-conference victories, but just like the first two wins of 2006, it wasn't easy and it didn't look pretty. The Badgers and Aztecs headed to the locker room at halftime in a 0-0 deadlock — Wisconsin's last scoreless first half came against Illinois Nov. 25, 1995, (incidentally, that game was the last tie in NCAA history, ending 3-3).

But the UW offense came alive after the break, using a 53-yard touchdown run by P.J. Hill and a Paul Hubbard score to gain the victory. The Wisconsin defense took care of the rest, surrendering just 115 total yards in Bret Bielema's first shutout as head coach.

"[It's] not every week [that] our offense is going to put up a big number of points, they just had an off day today," linebacker Mark Zalewski said. "Every game we come into it as a defense just saying we want to win this game ourselves. Any help from the offense is great, but we have the mentality, we want to win the game, and I think today was one of those games that we did a lot ourselves to really win this game."

Zalewski led the Badgers with eight tackles and was responsible for two of UW's five sacks at the expense of SDSU's backup-turned-starter Darren Mougey.

Both of Zalewski's sacks came on third downs, where San Diego State never found a rhythm — or any success after the first quarter. After converting their first two attempts, the Aztecs failed to move the chains on any of their next 14 tries.

UW was disappointed with allowing Western Illinois to go 8-of-16 on the make-or-break play last week, but the Badgers were thrilled with their success in keeping Aztec punter Michael Hughes busy all game long with 12 punts on the day.

"It's all about starting fast, building our confidence up early, then we get flying and we get going, we get the third down stops and get off the field," linebacker Jonathan Casillas said. "We handle our business on first and second down and we get to have fun on third down."

After the first quarter, the Aztec running game went backward, running the ball 16 times for a loss of 14 yards. Their longest run of the game came on a direct snap in fourth-down punt formation, a 12-yard gain.

"That's our first goal as a defense, shut down the run," senior safety Joe Stellmacher said. "If you can shut down the run, make them one-dimensional, that's huge for a defense. Our front seven did a tremendous job controlling the line of scrimmage."

And when the Aztecs were rendered one-dimensional, Mougey simply didn't do enough in the passing game to make any dents in the Badger defense. Mougey completed 15-of-27 passes for 102 yards.

"We thought that at any moment we were going to break a play and get that big momentum swing that we needed. That play just never happened," San Diego State coach Chuck Long said. "Hats off to Wisconsin. They were very solid defensively throughout the game. They were very consistent, not giving us the opportunity to break that big play."

Hill reached the century mark shortly into the second half for the third straight time in his young career, and with an offensive power outage was quiet until doing so … that is, until he broke the game open with his 53-yard scamper down the SDSU sideline.

True to form, Hill had to work for yards in breaking a couple of tackles on the run. But for the first time this season, Hill was still on his feet when he found the open field — his previous long run was 32 yards, earlier against the Aztecs — and capitalized on the opportunity with his fifth score of the year.

"There were two guys on me, and I got out of that, I saw open daylight, so I had to put on the speed to get as much yardage as I could," said Hill, who finished with a career-best 184 yards on 26 carries.

Badgers' quarterback, John Stocco, had a mediocre day on the stat sheet, going 12-of-23 with 85 yards. The day was salvaged for Stocco when he hit Hubbard in the end zone for a 6-yard score, the first touchdown of the season for a UW receiver.

"I've got to play better," Stocco said. "I think there's a few throws that I missed that I normally don't, and that's something that can't happen. Every now and then you're going to miss a throw, but it just happened too many times today."

"As time goes on, I see things happening with a little more consistency as well as the way they're catching the football," Bielema said of the passing game. "There were two drops in the first half that I was very adamant about on the sidelines that they needed to be able to make those catches and execute it. So it's baby steps, but we're making them."

With the non-conference schedule out of the way, the Badgers have a "big fish to fry" on Saturday, as cornerback Jack Ikegwuonu put it. No. 6 Michigan is coming off a 47-21 drubbing of then-No. 2 Notre Dame, and is looking strong coming into the showdown at the Big House.

"One of the things that we've talked about all along is to get through the non-conference schedule to this point undefeated and make a big game out of Michigan," Bielema said.

Now the Badgers have their wish.