Wisconsin may have lost, but when it seemed like Ohio State could do no wrong and was in front 21-7, the team fought back and only allowed a pair of field goals in the final 41 minutes of the game. The Badgers are a second half team and after giving up 309 yards in the first half, the No. 1 ranked defense allowed only 140 yards in the second half and gave the team a chance to win it at the end. Wisconsin showed a ton of fight and after falling behind 21-7. It could have been easy to just wave the white flag, but the team made some plays in the second half and came back to make it a game. The team also bounced back after all three touchdowns in the first half, where they forced two turnovers and a three-and-out in the three drives following the Buckeyes touchdowns. It has happened throughout this season, but when the team gets behind, the resiliency shown has been outstanding. They didn’t come all the way back, but they played really well to come back, showing its heart.
Leon Jacobs and Garret Dooley will be gone at the conclusion of the season, which will open up spots for others, such Andrew Van Ginkel. The junior had a terrific game against Ohio State, picking off a Barrett pass and returning it for a touchdown as well as forcing a fumble and recovering it. While the Wisconsin offense was struggling to consistently move the ball against the Ohio State defense in the first half, Van Ginkel single-handedly kept the Badgers in the game with the two turnovers forced in the first half. Those takeaways led to the only 10 points of the first half by Wisconsin. Hopefully that was a sign of things to come, as he will be the leader of the outside linebackers next season and one of the main pass rushers.
Also, junior kicker Rafael Gaglianone continued his stellar campaign, connecting on field goals from 28 and 46 yards to improve to 14-of-16 on the year. His 87.5 percent field goal percentage would tie his career-best, set last year, which he made 7-of-8 before missing the final 11 games of the season with a back injury. If that holds, it would be the best field goal percentage by a Wisconsin kicker since Matt Davenport connected on 19-of-21 (90.5 percent) in 1998. After missing all those games last year and having to redshirt, Gaglianone has improved as this season has gone on, making his last eight field goal attempts, including his career-long 52-yard kick to end the first half against Illinois. He has been a real weapon for the Badgers and will continue to be next year. The Brazilian is third in Wisconsin history with 58 field goals made, just one behind Philip Welch and seven behind Todd Gregoire.
Unfortunately, there were plenty of negatives from this game, the most this season. First off, Hornibrook is an average college quarterback. He is not terrible, but he will not be able to win many games for the Badgers and will certainly not be able to lead the program to its first national championship. The sophomore missed some throws a college quarterback should be able to make. Hornibrook will improve in the coming two years with the Badgers, but his deficiencies will kill Wisconsin. His inconsistency is maddening, going just 19-of-40 for 229 yards and two picks after playing very well in his final three halves of the regular season. Hornibrook can look solid against the lesser teams, but he needed to play a great game against Ohio State and failed to do that. Like I said, he will improve, but I don’t think his ceiling is that of a championship-winning quarterback, which is what the Badgers should be aiming for. In addition to inconsistency, his mobility, or lack thereof, is a huge flaw in his game. Every great quarterback can move around in the pocket to elude the rush and make plays outside the pocket. Now, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are (or were) not the most mobile quarterbacks in the world, but they make up for that with their intelligence. Those two have terrific accuracy and can throw it deep downfield when need be. You don’t see that with Hornibrook. Obviously, he doesn’t have to play like two of the best quarterbacks of all-time, but if he was even one of the top 20 quarterbacks in the country, Bucky would be playing for a national title.
For as good as well as the offensive line had played all year, the big guys up front were manhandled by Ohio State’s defensive front. As I mentioned earlier, Taylor had just 41 yards on 15 carries, by far his lowest yardage output of the season. His previous low was 73 at Illinois in which he was injured in the first half. In addition to the leading rusher in the conference being held to just 41 yards, the pass blocking was having all sorts of trouble stopping the Ohio State pass rush. Hornibrook was sacked three times and hurried four other times. It seemed like he was being pressured constantly and the Wisconsin quarterback did not respond well to it. The offensive line couldn’t run block and it was having trouble pass blocking. If you add those two things together and it equals fewer than 300 yards of total offense, just 14 offensive points scored and the first loss of the season. The Badgers needed to control the line of scrimmage in order to come away with a win, and just the opposite happened.I will just lump the entire defense into one paragraph, as the defense played its worst game of the year by far. Early in the season, the defense had a bit of a problem giving up big plays, having given up three 50+ yard plays in its first five games. That problem arose again in the Big Ten Championship game. After giving just those three plays of 50 yards or more in the first five games, the Badgers defense did not allow any such plays the remainder of the season. Then Ohio State was able to bust off four of them. The longest rush allowed by Wisconsin all season prior to Saturday was 28 yards. Dobbins had runs of 53 and 77 in the game, which set up 10 Buckeyes points. Those four big plays totaled 271 yards and set Ohio State up for 24 of its 27 points. Other than those plays, the Badgers defense played really well, giving up just 178 yards in 64 plays, an average of just 2.8 yards per play. But obviously you can't ignore those game-changing plays. One of the big plays annoyed me the most. With Ohio State facing a 2nd-and-10 from its own 43 late in the first quarter, Barrett threw a wide receiver screen to Parris Campbell. The talking heads will use the speed cliche, but if you actually watched the game, it was horrible tackling. On the screen, Campbell broke tackle attempts from Natrell Jamerson and Nick Nelson four yards down field and all the Ohio State receiver had to do was outrun Chris Orr and he was in the end zone to give the Buckeyes the lead back. The missed tackles were a theme in the game, and it was unusual since the Badgers defense had done so well in that area up to that point. No, it was not the speed of Ohio State that beat Wisconsin. It was the missed tackles. Two of the big plays in the first half by OSU were helped by missed tackles. That was the story of the first half. It was corrected in the second half, but the offense did not have the firepower to overcome the bad tackling and big plays given up by the defense in the first half.
Even with the win, Ohio State was passed up by Alabama for the fourth and final spot in the CFP and will play USC in the Cotton Bowl, which the Badgers played in last season. In that bowl, Bucky defeated previously undefeated Western Michigan 24-16. With its first loss, Wisconsin will travel to Miami to take on the Hurricanes in the Orange Bowl. It is the first Orange Bowl appearance in school history. Wisconsin will play at the opposing team’s stadium in its bowl for the first time since defeating UCLA 38-31 in the 1999 Rose Bowl. The game will be Dec. 30 at 7 p.m. CST and televised on ESPN with Steve Levy and Brian Griese on the call.
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