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Dominating the Time of Possession has long been the trademark of a healthy Wisconsin offense. The Badgers took that to a new level in Saturday’s 54-10 trouncing of Akron at Camp Randall Stadium.
Wisconsin held the ball for a whopping 40:52 of the game, the longest time of possession for the Badgers in the Paul Chryst era. It was the third time the Badgers have held the ball for over 40 minutes since the start of last season.
Akron head coach Terry Bowden took notice of the dominant performance.
“That’s the way they play—they huddle up and they stay with their game plan,” Bowden said. “Time of possession is critical as long as you’re scoring touchdowns at the end of those possessions. If you don’t score touchdowns at the end of those possessions, all you’re doing is letting someone else stay close to you. To me, it’s the way they play football and they do it really good.:
Wisconsin set the tone on the opening drive, marching 83 yards for a touchdown on 13 plays and hogging 6:55 of clock. In that span, the rushing attack racked up 62 yards on 11 carries. That momentum kept building throughout the remainder of the contest as Wisconsin amassed 294 yards and four touchdowns on the ground.
UW’s defense did its part on the other end, limiting the Zips to 10 first downs (two of which came via penalty). Akron was just 1-of-10 on third down and did not score an offensive touchdown. The Badgers forced a pair of fumbles, recovering one, and registered an interception. The combination Wisconsin’s steady run game and stout defense was simply too much for Bowden and company to deal with.
“Time of possession, when you’re running the football like they do and scoring touchdowns, time of possession is part of the deal,
Bowden said. “Their defense is always fresh, their offense the momentum keeps going and they’re very good at it.”
The exceptionally physical nature UW displayed in last week’s win over LSU was once again visible.
“It’s just the preparation that we had during the week,” sophomore nose tackle Olive Sagapolu said. .How much the coaches preach to play physical football, and that’s what our offense and defense did today. “When it comes down to it we just play hard-nosed football. We play physical, our defense is known for it. So coming out this week we just had the mentality to have fun, play the ball, and knock anybody who’s in the way.”
A large part of the Badgers’ success in playing keep away came from their 10-for-15 performance on third down, a stark contrast from last week’s 3-for-15 showing.
“I mean, we couldn’t be much worse than we were last week,” UW head coach Paul Chryst said. “It was good. We had more manageable ones, but I thought third down if you’re going to win games, you’ve got to be good on third down.”
It’s not realistic to expect the offense to be that good on third down during the remainder of the season. But Wisconsin is able to continue to find ways to win the T.O.P. category on the stat sheet, there is reason to expect more success. Since Chryst took over in 2015, the Badgers have won the T.O.P. battle in 11 of 15 games, going 9-2 in those contests.
The post Sunday Hangover: Badgers get possessive in blowout win appeared first on Madtown Badgers.
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