Good, Bad, and Ugly: Wisconsin

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11/3/2002 by Jon Miller of Hawkeye Nation

The Good:

Iowa is 6-0 in the BT for the first time- EVER! Hayden was a great coach and had some great teams, but was never able to go 6-0 in the BT. Also, ending a 5 game losing streak to Wisc. is huge. Brad Banks….could we have expected any more from this guy? He leads the nation in passing efficiency, in part because he has made great decision this year. But let us not forget a couple other factors:

1. Great OL

2. Great play calling- can the O’Keefe bashers admit they were wrong?

3. His supporting cast have made big plays…big runs by Fred Russell, great blocks by Edgar Cervantes, Eric Steinbach, etc., and great catches by Maurice Brown, Dallas Clark and others have allowed Banks to be in favorable situations to make plays.

Defense….the defense had a few people shaking their heads about mid season, but this defense has done one thing very well the entire year- HIT! Playing off the lead of the strong safety Bob Sanders, each member of this defense has punished opposing players at some point this year. The most impressive thing about this defense is that it is so good because of the team effort…different guys are stepping up each week! 11 guys, justing doing their jobs!

Okay…Wisc. Brad Banks and Ken O’Keefe get offensive game balls. Wisc. brought their safeties to the LOS determined to stop Iowa from running the ball and while the tactic worked for 3 quarters, O’Keefe, and Banks devised, and executed a game plan to make them pay for this- passes over the top that resulted in 275 yd passing, 2 passing TD and enough points to win this game without a great running attack.

Defensively, what can you say! We held a team that was averaging about 175 ypg rushing to 78 yd and we held the BT's leading rusher to 34 yds. We not only stopped the run, but we allowed an anemic 138 yds passing on 11-30 (37%) with 2 int. This was a total team defensive effort. Game ball to all eleven defenders (and throw in a couple reserves who played very well!).

The Bad:

Penalty yardage is perhaps the one area where this team needs to improve. 8 penalties for 64 yd is too many!

Nate Kaeding misses a FG..okay, other than proving he is human, some of the time, there is NOTHING bad about Kaeding!

Special teams…okay, not bad, but not as dominating as they were in the Michigan game!

The Ugly:

Again, there will be no Ugly after a BT win!

Hawkeye Nation was founded by Jon Miller, and later acquired by Rivals and Sports Illustrated. You can visit them at HawkeyeNation.com

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Good, Bad, and Ugly: Wisconsin

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