Big Ten West Race

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What we know is... the offense is good enough to win a division (2nd behind Ohio State). The defense needs to continue growing (still last place in the conference). If the young defense can continue improving, maybe the Gophs have a chance to make a run.

goph stats 11-7.png
 

I'm calling it: Wisconsin will play Michigan.

https://www.espn.com/college-footba...field-conditioning-coronavirus-cases-decrease

Wisconsin returned to limited on-field conditioning Friday as the number of active COVD-19 cases in the football program has started to decrease.

The Badgers have 14 active cases -- nine athletes, five staff members -- after one athlete and one staff member recorded positive COVID-19 tests during the past four days. Wisconsin elected to cancel last week's game against Nebraska and Saturday's game against Purdue because of the rise in positive tests among athletes and staff members. The program's active cases rose to 27 (15 athletes, 12 staff members) earlier this week.

Athletic director Barry Alvarez said Wisconsin never reached the Big Ten's "red/red" designation for team positivity, which requires upcoming competition to be canceled.

Head coach Paul Chryst, who tested positive for COVID-19 on Oct. 28, returned to in-person duties Thursday after 10 days of isolation. Wisconsin also paused all team activities on Oct. 28.

Wisconsin continues to hold all meetings virtually, and is using additional locker room space for its in-person activities. All athletes and staff are required to wear masks and maintain social distancing during the conditioning work.

The team will provide another update Monday. Wisconsin is scheduled to visit Michigan on Nov. 14.

Wisconsin, which opened the season Oct. 23 with a win against Illinois, likely must play its remaining five regular-season games to qualify for the West Division title and the Big Ten championship game. In order to compete in the game, a team must play at least six games.


Note the bolded. Even if their active cases hadn't been going down, they would've still got to make the call themselves.

They aren't going to just give up on the season. No chance.
 

Whatever Michigan did against us that worked so well, other teams figured it out.

If Michigan loses to a down Wisc ... feels like Harbaugh should get fired. Maybe in this wacky season they'll wait until the end of the year.
 

MplsGopher said:
Whatever Michigan did against us that worked so well, other teams figured it out.

If Michigan loses to a down Wisc ... feels like Harbaugh should get fired. Maybe in this wacky season they'll wait until the end of the year.
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I have no idea if Mich did anything unique against MN, but on the other side, MSU and IU did what most people expected teams would do to Mich, but what MN chose no to emphasize:
  1. Load the box, keep contain on the edges, and force Milton to beat you with his arm.
  2. Throw deep repeatedly to challenge Mich's young CB's (who have been torched the past 2 weeks).
 

I mean, they had the Ohio St and Alabama 2019 season game film. They knew what Don Brown was going to be about.

Along with just being the first game in a wacky preseason with no warm-up games, everything seemed to culminate against us in that game.


Not sure what is going to hurt worse at the end of the day: losing to Michigan, who might finish with losses to Wisc, Mich St, Indiana, Maryland, PSU, OSU, and who knows maybe even Rutgers , or losing to Maryland who might surprise everyone and finish second in the East, when we could've easily beaten them.

What a year, already.
 


Even if we finish at the division bottom, will still be on the fleck bandwagon as a result of last season. That said, given the illini's depleted roster, yesterday's result means nothing to me.
 






golf said:
Even if we finish at the division bottom, will still be on the fleck bandwagon as a result of last season. That said, given the illini's depleted roster, yesterday's result means nothing to me.
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So it's a win*?
 


Of course. You didn't really think that Wisconsin was just going to give up the season, did you???

https://uwbadgers.com/news/2020/11/9/wisconsin-football-update-nov-9.aspx

The Wisconsin football team began its regular game week preparations on Monday morning. The team is scheduled to practice each day this week in anticipation of Saturday's scheduled game at Michigan but UW Athletics will continue to monitor the program's COVID-19 testing results closely to determine the team's activities moving forward.

The football program currently has five active COVID-19 cases, two student-athletes and three staff members. Since Nov. 2, one staff member and one student-athlete have tested positive. Five of the last six days have yielded no positive cases.

"We had no new positives on Tuesday and Wednesday, which was a great sign," UW Director of Athletics Barry Alvarez said. "That's when we started thinking Friday could be a day we could get the team together to start doing things with an eye towards having a regular practice week this week. So we were cautious on Friday and Saturday, split guys into groups, and just did conditioning. The team then got together and held its regular Monday practice this morning.

"We feel confident that we have a handle on the situation and are excited to play this week at Michigan. As we have done throughout, we will continue to monitor our testing results and base our decision on those results."

The Badger football team first paused team activities on Oct. 28 and its scheduled games at Nebraska on Oct. 31 and home vs. Purdue on Nov. 7 were canceled.
 

MplsGopher said:
Of course. You didn't really think that Wisconsin was just going to give up the season, did you???

https://uwbadgers.com/news/2020/11/9/wisconsin-football-update-nov-9.aspx

The Wisconsin football team began its regular game week preparations on Monday morning. The team is scheduled to practice each day this week in anticipation of Saturday's scheduled game at Michigan but UW Athletics will continue to monitor the program's COVID-19 testing results closely to determine the team's activities moving forward.

The football program currently has five active COVID-19 cases, two student-athletes and three staff members. Since Nov. 2, one staff member and one student-athlete have tested positive. Five of the last six days have yielded no positive cases.

"We had no new positives on Tuesday and Wednesday, which was a great sign," UW Director of Athletics Barry Alvarez said. "That's when we started thinking Friday could be a day we could get the team together to start doing things with an eye towards having a regular practice week this week. So we were cautious on Friday and Saturday, split guys into groups, and just did conditioning. The team then got together and held its regular Monday practice this morning.

"We feel confident that we have a handle on the situation and are excited to play this week at Michigan. As we have done throughout, we will continue to monitor our testing results and base our decision on those results."

The Badger football team first paused team activities on Oct. 28 and its scheduled games at Nebraska on Oct. 31 and home vs. Purdue on Nov. 7 were canceled.
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What were they supposed to do differently? Play the Nebraska and Purdue games with dicey Covid results?
 



MNBadgerGuy said:
What were they supposed to do differently? Play the Nebraska and Purdue games with dicey Covid results?
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Huh?

The question was only if they were going to play the Michigan game or not. Of course they will.
 

It takes two to tango. If Minnesota, Iowa, Northwestern or Indiana can't play Wisconsin due to Covid (not at all impossible).................
 

All this talk but uw is just gonna win the division like always
 


bonin21 said:
All this talk but uw is just gonna win the division like always
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Probably. But if Iowa canceled the game with Wisconsin they are ineligible

They are now dependent on everyone else doing it right to win the division
 

balds said:
It takes two to tango. If Minnesota, Iowa, Northwestern or Indiana can't play Wisconsin due to Covid (not at all impossible).................
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This is an interesting point!

However, all four of those teams, at least as of now, are looking competitive and trying to get as high a bowl game as they can.

If they can help it, none of them will cancel their game with Wisc.


Actually ... if fate was that mean/kind ... and NW happened to be in the zone where they had the option to cancel the game or not ...... would actually be an interesting decision to cancel Wisc.
 

NW has slipped by Iowa, Nebraska, and just now Purdue 27-20.

They get Wisconsin at home next weekend in the defacto West championship game.


Wisconsin is the class of the West. Sorry, just a fact. They're destroying Michigan.

West:
Wisconsin
NW
...
Purdue
Iowa
...
Nebraska
...
Gophers
Illinois
 

so now with COVID numbers on the rise at MN, do they cancel WI game causing WI to miss its 3rd game and potentially not get to go to Indy? 2-3 sounds better than 2-4, get two weeks to prepare for NW. A win over NW and Nebraska gives a chance to win the cross over game to go 5-3 with a chance?
 

sbanyai said:
so now with COVID numbers on the rise at MN, do they cancel WI game causing WI to miss its 3rd game and potentially not get to go to Indy? 2-3 sounds better than 2-4, get two weeks to prepare for NW. A win over NW and Nebraska gives a chance to win the cross over game to go 5-3 with a chance?
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Not all 20 missing players were COVID related.
Could have just been a few for all we know.
Sounds like a couple DNP's could have been for other issues.
 


sbanyai said:
so now with COVID numbers on the rise at MN, do they cancel WI game causing WI to miss its 3rd game and potentially not get to go to Indy? 2-3 sounds better than 2-4, get two weeks to prepare for NW. A win over NW and Nebraska gives a chance to win the cross over game to go 5-3 with a chance?
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If you can play you play.
Hopefully the fans are smart enough to understand this is an odd year.
If northwestern goes 8-0 it doesn’t mean they’re the new Wisconsin.
If penn state goes 0-8 that doesn’t mean they’re the new Rutgers. Just an odd year all around.

We don’t know who is able to practice, coach, etc in a given week. We don’t know who has relatives who are sick that are on the mind of players. Just so many unknowns
 

MplsGopher said:
NW has slipped by Iowa, Nebraska, and just now Purdue 27-20.

They get Wisconsin at home next weekend in the defacto West championship game.


Wisconsin is the class of the West. Sorry, just a fact. They're destroying Michigan.

West:
Wisconsin
NW
...
Purdue
Iowa
...
Nebraska
...
Gophers
Illinois
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It'll be interesting to see how this realigns after this weekend. I could easily see Iowa losing at PSU. I believe Wisconsin is going to win handily over NW, although it'll clearly be their closest game yet. But if I had to guess, here's the final tiers in this strange COVID season:

Wisconsin
Can't see them losing
-----------
NW
Only loss in the West will be to Wisconsin, but it will be a resounding one
-----------
Purdue
Iowa
MN
These 3 all beat each other
-----------
Neb
I believe all the teams in the tier above will beat Neb
-----------
Illinois
Ouch
 

MGGopher said:
It'll be interesting to see how this realigns after this weekend. I could easily see Iowa losing at PSU. I believe Wisconsin is going to win handily over NW, although it'll clearly be their closest game yet. But if I had to guess, here's the final tiers in this strange COVID season:

Wisconsin
Can't see them losing
-----------
NW
Only loss in the West will be to Wisconsin, but it will be a resounding one
-----------
Purdue
Iowa
MN
These 3 all beat each other
-----------
Neb
I believe all the teams in the tier above will beat Neb
-----------
Illinois
Ouch
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This could be exactly correct. This past week I assumed Purdue was going to beat us, and so would've been in the tier with NW. But now that we won, I think you've nailed it here.

I guess we'll see, but not sure how "resounding" the loss will be today. Vegas has Wisc as 7.5pt favorites and it's at NW.
 

MplsGopher said:
This could be exactly correct. This past week I assumed Purdue was going to beat us, and so would've been in the tier with NW. But now that we won, I think you've nailed it here.

I guess we'll see, but not sure how "resounding" the loss will be today. Vegas has Wisc as 7.5pt favorites and it's at NW.
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Wisconsin is currently slightly overrated
Clear top 20 teams.
I’m not sure they’re a top 10 team yet. Have played nobody who is top 30
 

MplsGopher said:
This could be exactly correct. This past week I assumed Purdue was going to beat us, and so would've been in the tier with NW. But now that we won, I think you've nailed it here.

I guess we'll see, but not sure how "resounding" the loss will be today. Vegas has Wisc as 7.5pt favorites and it's at NW.
Click to expand...
My attempt has already been blown in just a few hours as apparently Nebraska is worse than Illinois and Wisconsin and NW are quite even (although 4 turnovers and a rash of Wisc WR injuries is having an impact). 2020...
 

Northwestern is on the verge of winning the West for the 2nd time in 3 years. Awesome stuff.
 

RogueGopher said:
Northwestern is on the verge of winning the West for the 2nd time in 3 years. Awesome stuff.
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Up 2 games on everyone (because they’ll win the Wisconsin tiebreak)
Up 3 games on the two west teams that can still beat them.
Crossover game against hapless Sparty
 

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