Pay no mind to that 6-1 Big Ten team

EDIT: BlogPoll votes update. Explanations below. Still 12.5 hours to go before the ballot goes final.

***

BlogPoll voters, allow me to exhort you: be unto the Badgers as the national voters. Yea, in their wisdom, the AP and the Coaches have seen fit to rank the Badgers at #21 and #22, respectively. This is a position that suits the Badgers, a 6-1 team that has played one bad half of football all year.

Yeah, you could point at PJ Hill and exclaim, "this man is second in the NCAA in rushing yardage, gaining over 1000 yards and creating 11 scores, and there are still six games to go!" Or you could look at their record and say, "Why, they're already bowl eligible, and they still have to play five more regular-season games!" Or maybe you might notice that Wisconsin is leading the Big Ten in scoring, garnering 33.9 points per game. You could even look at the fact that UW is only allowing 12.7 points per game, and that the only time they ceded over 20 points was when they visited what the AP poll is calling the #2 team in the nation.

But why would you do that? Surely, the AP has it right; the Badgers, at #21, don't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the Boise States and Rutgerses of the worlds. They simply don't have the marquee losses like Oregon (by 21 to Cal) and Notre Dame (by 26 to Michigan ... the Badgers only have a 14-point loss upon which to hang their hats!) And you certainly shouldn't rank Wisconsin higher than Iowa ... after all, they lost to Indiana, and we only beat the Hoosiers by five touchdowns.

So, BlogPoll voters, don't waste your credibility; do the right thing and follow the lead of the brilliant voters in the AP and Coaches polls.

Here are my rankings, FWIW. Point out my mistakes ... EDIT: Mistakes have been pointed out. I have come around to the idea that LSU is not top ten material, but that forced me to put a very non-top-ten-worthy team, Louisville, in their stead. This displeases me, but whatever. I also dropped the Badgers one spot, but that's as low as I'm going. Reasoning: I think the Badgers would beat everyone below them. Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, and West Virginia would get chewed up and spit out by PJ Hill, and the defense would bring the pain on Quinn, bottle up Johnson, and stone Slaton.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Ohio State	--
2	Michigan	--
3	Texas	4
4	Southern Cal	1
5	California	4
6	Auburn	10
7	Florida	4
8	Tennessee	2
9	Clemson	2
10	Louisville	2
11	Arkansas	4
12	Wisconsin	7
13	Georgia Tech	1
14	LSU	4
15	Notre Dame	5
16	West Virginia	12
17	Rutgers	4
18	Oregon	7
19	Wake Forest	7
20	Boston College	6
21	Nebraska	1
22	Boise State	2
23	Pittsburgh	3
24	Oklahoma	2
25	Texas A&M	1

Dropped Out: Georgia (#13), Iowa (#14), Missouri (#17), Virginia Tech (#23), North Carolina State (#24).

Technorati tags: wisconsin badgers, college football, university of wisconsin, UW-Madison

I have just one question to axe you

How many m's are in "dominated?" Is it one, or zero? Can I exclude the m? Because the m's I saw on Saturday weren't doing much of anything. I figure their presence was superfluous.

How about the n's? Is the word spelled doMINNation? Are there two n's?

On Saturday, Minnesota's football team went the way its academic reputation, admissions standards, campus atmosphere, and location do when compared to the University of Wisconsin: on the losing end of a ridiculously one-sided battle.

Obviously, it was nice to see everything come together for the Badgers. PJ Hill was his usual badass self, turning in another 150+ yard effort and finding the end zone twice. John Stocco was on the freakin' money with FOUR touchdown passes. I know that the Gophers don't have a secondary, but the fact that receivers were (a) catching the ball and (b) making it to the end zone is very, very, very encouraging. The only negatives were the blocked extra point that got returned for two points, and the fact that the axe was already sitting on the Wisconsin sideline so the linemen didn't have to rush over and take it from the stoopid Gophers.

And that's not to mention the defense. Jack Ikegwuonu had an insane game, setting the tone by running back an Amir Pinnix fumble for a score when the game was barely a minute old. The fumble was caused by DT Jason Chapman, who was a monster all day long. He sacked Cupito twice, which is applause-worthy. The Badger Herald has a great article about the defensive duo here.

I was impressed by our tight ends, Crooks and Beckum, and Stocco's poise. What a fantastic all-around effort, and how especially sweet that it came in the form of the obliteration of this team's main rival.

Plus, now the Badgers are bowl eligible, which is a nice bonus. More thoughts later, but the great thing to consider now is that we have five weeks to climb the bowl ladder, with home games against Illinois, Buffalo, and Penn State (now featuring two dead quarterbacks), and away games against hapless Purdue and the not-as-good-as-Indiana Iowa Hawkeyes.

If they take care of business and a couple bounces go against the Wolverines or Buckeyes, and this team could be looking at a trip to Pasadena ...

Technorati tags: wisconsin badgers, college football, university of wisconsin, UW-Madison, minnesota golden gophers

Am I back?

Oh. Oh, yes. And let us speak not of my travels, but of the Badgers.

Which, of course, I am fully unprepared to do at this juncture. Turns out the international media, much like the American media, do not care much about the doings of our intrepid Badgers. But let me just say that I am happy to see that Wisconsin is 5-1 and has, in the past two weeks, thoroughly destroyed two teams that were marked for thorough destruction.

I'd like to thank Nicole for filling in extremely capably. Read her non-Badger thoughts at Cute Sports.

Since I'm so woefully in the dark about the on-field doings of the Badger football team (last I saw, they were up 28-0 on Indiana), let's focus on an extraordinarily silly drama that is playing itself out in the student media: the Chancellor has found something amiss with the band! The band members aren't sure what it is, but it may involve foul language and/or the consumption of liquor! I am scandalized! More on this as it develops.

Also, a Badger disco king at the Michigan game caused Daily Cardinal writer Ryan Reszel to see the light about older fans:

Consider this: In the past 13 years, UW has had two losing seasons. From 1964-1992, they had six winning seasons.

How many of today’s students would have stuck around through the winless seasons of ’67 and ’68. Who among the “road warriors” in Ann Arbor could have endured four consecutive four-win years in the 1970s?

So next time you’re tempted to yell at the “old people,” stop and think. Haven’t they earned the right to sit during a game, to be unrealistically optimistic, to have their own disco dance party in a hotel bar?

Technorati tags: wisconsin badgers, college football, university of wisconsin, UW-Madison

Blog Poll

I'll admit to having no idea what to do with this week's poll. I haven't seen a top 25 this screwy in a long time. The AP has two two-loss teams in the rankings. Most years were worried about having too many great teams in the polls. This year we've only got a few great teams and then a lot of mediocre ones. There's been a lot of shakeup in college football - lots of upsets and lots of disappointments.

This is the best I could come up with:

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Ohio State	--
2	Michigan	1
3	Florida	2
4	West Virginia	5
5	Southern Cal	1
6	Tennessee	5
7	Texas	1
8	Louisville	1
9	California	5
10	Notre Dame	5
11	Clemson	1
12	Georgia Tech	6
13	Georgia	--
14	Iowa	3
15	Arkansas	11
16	Auburn	14
17	Missouri	4
18	LSU	12
19	Wisconsin	1
20	Boise State	2
21	Rutgers	2
22	Nebraska	2
23	Virginia Tech	2
24	North Carolina State	2
25	Oregon	15

Dropped Out: Oklahoma (#16), Washington (#23).

Apparently all it takes is to kick Northwestern while they're down

Finally, we're ranked.

This week's AP poll has the Badgers at #25. We are not on the coaches poll.

The poll looks like this:


1. Ohio State (63) 6-0 1,623
2. Florida 6-0 1,516
3. USC 5-0 1,451
4. Michigan 6-0 1,429
5. West Virginia (2) 5-0 1,416
6. Texas 5-1 1,294
7. Louisville 5-0 1,247
8. Tennessee 5-1 1,159
9. Notre Dame 5-1 1,068
10. California 5-1 1,017
11. Auburn 5-1 943
12. Clemson 5-1 876
13. Georgia Tech 5-1 739
14. LSU 4-2 693
15. Iowa 5-1 661
16. Georgia 5-1 615
17. Arkansas 4-1 482
18. Oregon 4-1 474
19. Missouri 6-0 469
20. Boise State 6-0 449
21. Nebraska 5-1 431
22. Virginia Tech 4-1 360
23. Oklahoma 3-2 271
24. Rutgers 5-0 194
25. Wisconsin 5-1 86

Another Badger win

I didn't see a ton of the Badger game on replay last night, mostly because who doesn't have anything better to do at 10pm on a Saturday night? They won, as they should have. They looked mighty ugly for most of the game. The score is more indicative of a lack of opponent than it is of our strength.

This season has been all about playing up or down to our opponents. Someone complained about the number of turnovers yesterday and said if we'd done that against Michigan, we'd have been done for.

But it wouldn't have happened against Michigan. We played our best football that Saturday. But against opponents as pathetic as San Diego State, we've put on a poor showing. Apparently we can't get up for games against small opponents.

It's a precarious place for the Badgers and we can only hope they can hold on to it. I mean, what happens when you play a middlin' opponent? What happens when we play Iowa? Iowa's a very, very good team this year, but you don't get excited for a game with them like you do for a team like Michigan or Ohio State. The history and recognition isn't there.

We can only hope that having the history with Bielema and Iowa will mean the team is riled up.
As for the game, P.J. Hill continues to emerge as one hell of a back. His power is unreal and his yards after contact have to be some of the best numbers in the nation.

Paul Hubbard continues the one step forward, two steps back routine. There is no excuse for the fumbles yesterday. Neither were good hits or good defense. The second ball he knocked out of his own hands trying to get a better grip. I know we're a young team, but I feel we've got enough other options. Bench the kid til he figures out how to hold on to the ball.

There's no excuse for this.

Once again, the Badger game is not on TV. This was understandable when we were playing beginning of the season schedule fillers, but this is a home Conference matchup. Why is it not televised? Especially when the local affiliate that would normally carry the game in this instance is showing Penn State vs. Minnesota.

How does this make any sense? You're going to show us "extra" coverage and it's not even our game?


But don't worry, you can watch the replay tonight at 1:30 am!

This is not ok!

Today's the beginning of the hockey season.

The Journal-Sentinel has a couple of articles:

Profile of Brian Elliot

Things to Watch

Madison.com has an article about the seniors that's also a preview

and an article about the upcoming season


UW Student paper The Badger Herald's article takes a look at how this game could compare to the last time we played in Green Bay - the 3OT winner against Cornell in the NCAAs to send us to the Final Four.

Badger Hockey 101

Ok, so I'm going to be working on the premise that you all know next to nothing about hockey, especialy the college hockey scene. My apologies if things are too "dumbed down." Conversely, I'm really, really excited it's hockey season already and I'm always eager to convert more fans, so my apologies if I get rambling or too detailed.

Finally, there isn't a lot I know about the Women's Hockey team except for the fact that they are great. They're returning a better team than the Men are and they're a preseason consensus #1. They're returning 17 girls from last years team, including Patty Kazmeier Award (national best player) winner Sara Bauer. Goalkeeper Jessie Vetter was named the MVP of last year's National Championship.

Last year's title was the first for the women's team.

The thing outsiders will find most interesting about this team is that they are coached by Mark Johnson, former University of Wisconsin player and member of the 1980 Miracle On Ice U.S. Men's Hockey Team. (He scored two goals in the game against Russia.)

Both Johnson and Men's coach Mike Eaves were players on the Badgers 1977 team that won the National Championship.

Johnson was recently named head coach of the U.S. Women's National Hockey team.

___


Ok, on to the men.


Congratulations, you're about to become a fan of the number one team in the nation and defending National Champions.

First, some basics.

Last year's title was the 6th for the Badger men's hockey team. We've won the National Championship in 1973, 1977, 1981, 1983, 1990 and 2006.

Hockey conferences are not set up like the other sports. The Badgers are a part of the highly competitive Western Collegiate Hockey Association(WCHA) Conference. The other schools in this conference are Colorado College, Minnesota, University of Denver, University of Alaska-Anchorage, Michigan Tech University, University of Minnesota-Duluth, Minnesota State-Mankato, St. Cloud State University, and the University of North Dakota.

A member of the WCHA has won the National Championship the last five years running.
Six of this season's pre-season Top 20 are from the WCHA.
The women's championship has been contested since 2001 - a WCHA school has won every title.

The number one Badger that you need to know if goalkeeper Brian Elliot.
Brian is a senior and last year he was on of three finalists for the Hobey Baker award (pronouced Hoe-Bee) - given to the nation's top player. This nomination came despite the fact that he missed a portion of the season with an injured knee.

Brian is arguably the number one goalie in the country. His stats are a bit skewed from last season due to the injury, but in the final 9 games of last season, including the Frozen Four run, he was 8-1, with a 97% save percentage and a goals against average of less than 1.

This is made all the more spectacular by the fact that before last season, no one had heard of Brian Elliot. He was an 11th round draft pick. He was the backup for two years behind an All-American.

Also, he's from Alaska.

This season, the key is going to be finding guys to put the puck in the net. We lost quite a few goal scorers to early exit and graduation. Guys who accounted for 60% of last year's goals are no longer on the team.

There are two guys left who had double digit points last season. They're both sophomores. A lot of the pressure rests securely on the shoulders of Jack Skille and Ross Carlson.
Skille particularly is used to scoring in big pressure situations, as it was his goal in Triple Overtime against Cornell that sent the Badgers to the Frozen Four.

There is a lot of worry that the team's lack of goal scorers will be a considerable problem, but I wouldn't expect it to be a big issue. With the defense that we have - six returning starters plus Elliot - we won't need many goals to win games. Last season it took just one goal to win the game to send us to the Frozen Four and just two goals to win the National Championship game. You don't need offensive fireworks if you're not letting pucks past you on the other end.


__

Cocktail party conversation tidbits:

The national finals are called the Frozen Four. Last year they were in Milwaukee. This year they're in St. Louis.

Wisconsin beat Maine to win their semi-final in the Frozen Four. They beat Boston College in the Final to win the National Championship.

The biggest upset of last season was in the playoffs. Tiny Holy Cross college, a bottom seed, upset Minnesota, the WCHA conference winner and a number one seed in the playoffs. WE LOVE HOLY CROSS!

Wisconsin's most hated opponent, as always, is Minnesota. We will not let them forget Holy Cross. They had a player, who left early last year to go to the NHL named Phil Kessl. He was from Madison and he chose to play at Minnesota. That's hockey treason. WE HATE PHIL KESSL! At last year's Frozen Four semifinal, the entire crowd began chanting "Where is Kessl? *clap, clap, clapclapclap* because his team didn't make it. We really don't like him

If you thought football games were loud or that the student section was loyal or brutal, I'd like to introduce you to hockey fans. They're louder, more raucous and much, much more rude. Plus, the Kohl Center (where they play) is much smaller, so getting the student section organized is a lot easier.

The hockey team's number one fan is an adorable older man named Phil. Phil is at every game. Phil has groupies. Every time we score, Phil holds up the number that corresponds with how many goals we've accumulated and the whole stadium counts with him. 1,2,3 WE WANT MORE! His groupies (assumably his wife and children) will also wear sweatshirts with the numbers on them.



Finally, go here to watch a highlight film of last year's season. Well worth it.

Here is my post recounting being at the Frozen Four semi-final

This is my post from the day they won it all.

This is an ESPN article about the Championship, complete with video. This is another ESPN article.

This is the official site of the WCHA and is a good place to find news.

This is the U.S. College Hockey Online site, also a must read if you want to keep up with what's going on. And this is their forum, where you can find fans of literally every team.


I'll let you all go, but if you want more hockey info, I'll be posting more over on my site in the coming days.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled football programming.

BlogPoll Week 6

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Ohio State	--
2	Auburn	1
3	Michigan	1
4	Southern Cal	2
5	Florida	--
6	Louisiana State	3
7	Louisville	--
8	Texas	4
9	West Virginia	3
10	Oregon	6
11	Tennessee	3
12	Clemson	3
13	Georgia	3
14	Cal	1
15	Notre Dame	3
16	Oklahoma	1
17	Iowa	6
18	Georgia Tech	2
19	Rutgers	--
20	Wisconsin	1
21	Missouri	5
22	Boise State	4
23	Washington	3
24	Nebraska	--
25	Virginia Tech	17

Dropped Out: Arizona State (#22), Boston College (#23), South Carolina (#25).

Any suggestions, changes, or criticism? Let me know before tomorrow morning, so I can submit changes.

The nation's premiere programs

I saw this article over on fanblogs.com and thought I'd solicit some opinons over here.

The article discusses which football programs are the elite/premiere programs in the country. We're not talking the best team in the nation. What the author is looking at are "the core ingredients of recent success, legend, and football lore" and "we're talking about THE big time football schools of our era. "

Basically, he says, if your son were set to play college football, what schools letters of interest would you be proudest for him to receive?

His Top 20:

Ohio State
Michigan
Penn State
Wisconsin
Notre Dame
USC
Texas
Oklahoma
Nebraska
Texas A&M
Auburn
Alabama
Florida
Tennessee
Georgia
LSU
Florida State
Miami
Virginia Tech
West Virgina


Admittably, I was extremely proud (and surprised) to see Wisconsin on his list. It's often hard to judge how the wind blows for your team when you're on the inside looking out.


There's a ton of comments and discussion about which teams do and do not deserve this "honor" so click the link and read all about it, if you're interested.

But what do you think? Are we a Top 20 program? Did he leave anyone out? Did he include programs that shouldn't be included?

What about the conference breakdowns. Four Big Ten teams. Six SEC schools. Four ACC schools. Can we infer things about the conferences this way? Are the top 4 ACC schools comperable to the top 4 Big Ten schools?

Discuss.

Where do we stand?

We're five games into the season and we stand at a respectable 4-1 - which is where everyone except maybe the players themselves thought we'd be. The Michigan loss was expected.

Now we move into the end of the schedule, playing 5 of the last 7 games at Camp Randall, where we've lost just one game since 2004. The rest of the schedule is by no means a cakewalk, but this team is looking a heck of a lot better than many thought they would.

The passing game has made progress, with Stocco having collected a nice cadre of 8 or so receivers. Considering the entire core of receivers had a combined total of 3 catches, this is a significant acheivement. Paul Hubbard is proving he can be reliable.

P.J. Hill has been the one to step into the "token" UW RB role. You knew we'd have one. We always seem to come upon one, despite the dire circumstances coming into the season. Dywon Rowan is a capable #2 back and true freshman Lance Smith has had baptism by fire and seems to be surviving rather than floundering.

The Special Teams has it's ups and downs, with Zach Hampton proving a bright spot.

The Defense took a few games to get into rhythm, but they finally seem to be living up to their hype. When you're the largest line in D1, you've got to walk to the walk. It took some weeks, but it appears that Joe Thomas and the boys have gotten their act together. They proved they can handle run defense against Michigan. Despite some stumbles, they've shown they aren't going to give up and tremendous overall effort.

Few teams are going to provide the opportunity for offensive fireworks like Indiana did, but teams like Northwestern and Purdue should not provide too big of a stumbling block for this team.

Young team and young staff taken into consideration, this season isn't shaping up so bad. Ideally, this could be a one loss season - It'll depend on whether or not we can stay with Iowa. (And Penn State's not a game we can look past either)

I'm not sure why exactly, but I've been looking at this season as a bit of a throw-away. Whatever happens, happens - don't expect too much. But clearly this could turn out to be another season for the books. With our cupcake schedule, I'm not looking for any kind of BCS or poll cred, but any season that's 1,2 or 3 losses is nothing to sneeze at.

Vindication is mine!!

John Stocco was named Big Ten offensive player of the week, thus proving yesterday's whining about him not getting respect after Saturday's game.

Postponement...

I know I said I'd write about hockey this weekend, but I've barely slept so it's an early night for me. I promise to get around to a hockey preview.

In the meantime, the Badgers whooped up on Indiana, 52-17. Most times when you say the score wasn't indicative of the game, you mean that the game was closer than the score would lead you to believe. In this case, the opposite is true. It took until the Badgers had their second team in for Illinois to really be able to get any offense going.

During the course of yesterday's games, a player of the day award is given out. Yesterday's went to a Penn State WR who racked up 200-some yards.
An argument could have been made for John Stocco, who was incomplete on only 2 passes yesterday. His 15 for 17, 304 yard, 3 TD performance was impressive and commanding, and didn't lose any thunder based on the opponent. Plus, those numbers were put up in a little over 2 quarters. And they gave him a perfect QB rating.

P.J. Hill showed his versatility, upping his catch count to 12, (and his yards/catch average to 11.8)

Mark Zalewski had 6 solo tackles yesterday, and the offensive line allowed just one hit on Stocco - and that hit came well after Stocco released the ball on a TD pass.

Yesterday's predictions proved to be pretty spot on. The defense and punt coverage units were especially spectacular in keeping James Hardy and Marcus Thigpen out of the game.

The biggest question mark for me yesterday came on special teams. While Zach Hampton has proved himself adept at avoiding tacklers, too often we are coming out of the enzone instead of taken touchbacks and not calling for faircatches when the opponents are right in our face - both of which have worsened our starting field position on mutliple occasions. As far as I'm concerned, there's just no excuse or reason for this. If you're halfway into the endzone, you don't try to return the punt. Take a knee and be happy with the 20 yard line. If the gunners have outrun your coverage and their right in your face, you're probably not going to be able to beat them and you're forcing your coverage into blocks in the back and holding.