The Blog for the Sports Gamer Three guys who love Sports Gaming rant and rave about various stuff.

Saturday afternoon notes (UW/Iowa focus)

- Well, the Badgers just played themselves out of the Big Ten title hunt.  Up 10-3 with the ball in the 2nd quarter and controlling the game on the ground, they decide to bring a Freshman QB to run the option for a series... they go three and out and kill every bit of momentum they had in the game.  After that drive, they had drives of -1, 17, 6, 42, 7, and 24.  While allowing Iowa to move the ball on every single possession after that.

They looked to just coach themselves into a corner.  The coaching staff continued to run an offense that looked like they were up by 14, constantly handing the ball off up the middle on 1st and 2nd down, setting up 3rd and long situations where they would make 5 yard passes and then punt.

The team had absolutely no sense of urgency, even after falling behind.

Defensively, they were playing against an accurate pocker passing QB and kept dropping back and giving the receivers 5 to 10 yard cushions every single time.   When you're only rushing 4, you have to put some pressure on the receivers to get open and they never did it.  Come to think of it, this team never puts pressure on the receivers.  Maybe they just don't have cornerbacks that can do it... but they sure can't play the zone well either.

I think the coaching staff is largely to blame for this loss.  The team is better than this and has played better than this when the playbook was opened up.

OSU is getting beat UGLY at Purdue and the Badgers could have put themselves into the Big Ten championship picture, but as it is... it looks to be yet another season where Badger fans have to settle for average rather than stepping up and moving up into the elite of the Big Ten.

Iowa is in the drivers seat for the Big Ten championship, and they deserve it after today.  They came into Madison took what the Badgers dished out early and beat them handily.   If they take care of business, in the next 3 weeks, they have a great shot at a big time BCS bowl if they can beat OSU.

As a Badger fan, this was a sobering loss.  After playing very well for the first 5 weeks, they really have hurt themselves with turnovers and poor play at times.  It's beginning to look a lot like an Alamo Bowl this year.  Sadly...