Badgers ready for rivalry-like game with Northwestern

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There are a few big pillars to the Big Ten’s foundation, and one of them is the strength of some of college football’s longest-standing and biggest rivalry games. Some may even call it the conference of trophy games. Seemingly every game in the league has something on the line. Wisconsin has such games with Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska already. But, one team that may be budding as a...

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Don't know what to make of this one. NW has given up rushing yards. If the Badgers can run on them, this thing could be a 3 score type game. I think the defense is good enough to keep NW under 21 points. It will really come down to whether the offense can move the ball on them like Duke did. If that is the defense we see from NW, this thing could be something like 38-20. But as Mark says, it's Northwestern and weird things happen when we play them.
 
I'm always hesitant when it comes to the Badgers playing Northwestern. Making it worse, it's their first Big 10 game. Both of these factors make this a tough one to call.

The Badgers could lose this one if they don't run the ball well. I don't count on Hornibrook repeating what he did in his last game. The Wildcats are by far a better team than we faced. They'll come to play, and play hard.

I think the difference will come in how well the Badgers run the ball. We need to get consistent gains on the ground, not an 80 yard run and 9 no gains. It may show as an average of 8.0 YPG but it's only one play and a bunch of failures. We need to grind it out to beat them. Five or six yards a pop, and about 16 to 20 pass completions to keep them from loading the box.

My gut says I might be wrong, but I see the Badgers winning this one 24-17. We could blow them out, or get beat. This is a real conundrum.
 
TE Troy Fumagalli out today. That makes it harder already. This is going to be a close game I think.
 
I think Penniston & Neuville will surprise everyone with what they bring to the table. It might actually end up making Fumigali even better when he gets back from his injury. Competition does that to good players.

It also will force Hornibrook to look past his throwing 30% of his passes to Fumigali.

Fumigali has 15 of the Badger completions, where the other two have 5 combined, for 10%.
 
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