UW-Iowa thoughts

Watching the postgame on the Big Ten Network, I saw Bret Bielema's press conference. At one point he ended a sentence with "The team that's beating Wisconsin the most is Wisconsin."

That sums it up. Because let's face it, this Iowa team that crushed us today is, at best, marginally above average. In this year's Big Ten, that could be enough for a top three finish, but that team has good lines and a good back and not much more.

Right now, that's a lot more than what you need to beat the Badgers.

-I really hate to say "I told you so," especially when it involves the subpar play of an amateur athlete who's out there trying his best. But does anyone still think Dustin Sherer is a better option at quarterback than Allan Evridge? With a couple exceptions, Sherer was pretty bad today. His accuracy was spotty. He locked onto his primary receiver and never seemed to progress from there. He's not mobile. He threw two picks and was a couple inches from throwing four or five.

The offensive line protected reasonably well, and we had receivers open, but the passing game never hit a rhythm today. I thought Scott Tolzien looked better at the end, but circumstances and personnel force you to take that with a grain of salt.

Who should start next week? Right now I'd say Tolzien, but might change my mind in a couple days ... or a couple hours.

-The BTN crew was going on and on about Shonn Greene and touting him as a Heisman candidate, but my mom could have run for 100 yards behind that offensive line today. On most of Greene's successful runs he wasn't touched for what seemed like 10 yards, and while he did show some nice moves and toughness to make everything he could out of those runs, his performance today was a reflection of his line's dominance.

Or our defensive front's ineptness. Forget getting into the backfield and recording tackles for loss. These guys were getting dominated at the point of attack, putting all the pressure on our defensive backs to make saving tackles.

-On Greene's first touchdown run, DeAndre Levy took a bad angle. Greene showed terrific patience, just waiting for our defenders to run themselves out of position to make a play.

On Greene's second touchdown run, he broke about 73 tackles. On his third touchdown run, Shane Carter ran himself to the wrong side of the Iowa blocking wall, and was in no position to even get a hand on Greene. On Greene's fourth TD run, he ran untouched until he was about 15 yards past the line of scrimmage.

Last year the problem on defense was overpursuit and bad angles to the ball. This year it seems to be the opposite problem, guys playing tentatively, then reacting after it's too late. Having never been an effective defensive football player myself, I imagine there's a fine line between the two that you need to hit to be effective. I can't remember another Badger team struggling so much to toe that line.

-John Clay ran fine, but BTN's Chris Martin said his pad level needed to be lower -- good point. Clay's a legit 6-2 and needs to make sure he's hitting linebackers in their stomachs, not their shoulders. Also thought P.J. Hill ran reasonably well until getting hurt. If his ankle was hurt, why was he standing on the sidelines? When I hurt my ankle enough to sit out at noontime hoops, no way I'm standing after that. Unfortunately he's on the verge of complete irrelevance.

-Iowa's tough against the run, but why did we throw the ball 20 times in the first half with a scattershot quarterback making his first start?

-The hang time on Brad Nortman's punts seems to be about a second less than it should be, doesn't it?

-The announcers commented that O'Brien Schofield was late getting on the field for the first play of the second half. After we kicked off. After knowing all of halftime that the first play from scrimmage in the second half would have our defense on the field. This is the stuff that's killing us.

-Josh Oglesby really struggled at tackle today, flat-out whiffing on pass rushers several times and committing at least one penalty. On the other side of the line, Eric Vanden Heuvel played fine, but there was one pass play, a designed swing pass to Zach Brown, where EVH was supposed to get out and block an Iowa cornerback in space, a la Joe Thomas. There's only one Joe Thomas.

-Officiating by no means cost us this game, but I wanted to bring to light two calls that really killed us. The first was a roughing the passer penalty on Jonathan Casillas. From the replays BTN showed, that looked like a horrible call. Iowa scored a couple plays later.

The second was the punt preceding the blocked Nortman punt. The refs got Prince Moody for hitting Andy Brodell after he apparently called fair catch. The replays showed a second or two before Brodell fielded the ball, and I never saw his hand go up. Brodell had to be calling for a fair catch the second the ball left Nortman's foot, or else it would have been caught on camera. He may have gotten his hand up, but I didn't see it. The offsetting penalties nullified what would have been a first down and made us re-kick, and we know what happened next.

-POSITIVE BADGER PLAY ALERT: The first two drives on offense and defense in the second half were solid. And Philip Welch continues to make the placekicking game the least of our concerns. Also thought our cornerbacks played well, or at least they didn't get beat badly today by Iowa's pedestrian quarterbacks and receivers. Sounds like Mario Goins has a concussion, though, hopefully he'll be all right for Illinois. Brown showed a spark late.

-If you would have told me that we'd outgain Iowa 409-375, hold them to 1-of-10 on third down conversions, and go 3-for-3 on field goal attempts, I would have liked our chances.

Where do we go from here? If you're like most of the people who've voted in the poll in the right-hand corner, not to a bowl, that's for sure.