As the 2019 season brings to a close another decade of college football, BadgersWire has been engaged in a series of reflective pieces. “Record Review” is another series examining how the Badgers have fared against the rest of the Big Ten Conference in the 2010s. Next up is an examination of the Badgers’ record against one of the conference’s more pesky teams, Northwestern. This is one of the few series that Wisconsin has struggled to win with great regularity in its own division. Let’s take a look at the numbers and margins.
Using Stassen, Badgers Wire pulled up every result against Northwestern in the past decade. Wisconsin gained a 5-4 series advantage (a win for the decade) after its victory this year. That puts the Badgers at 4-1 at home, but they were 1-3 on the road. At home, Wisconsin’s average margin of victory was 36-16. On the road, that dropped down to 22-20 in favor of Northwestern. The two programs tend to win in pairs before losing in pairs. This year marked the first time since 2009, interestingly enough, that Northwestern or Wisconsin didn’t win two in a row.
The series isn’t one of the bigger ones for either team. Minnesota, Iowa, and even the recently added Nebraska have bigger rivalries. Yet, Northwestern is a game that Wisconsin should win. Northwestern has good years and bad years, and struggles to stack together several great seasons due to the grade requirements at the school, but the Wildcats don’t have the talent to consistently compete with the Badgers. They have to rely on fundamentals, scheme, and matchups to win this game.
That said, Wisconsin needs to improve its record in this series if it wants to take the next step in the 2020s. Losses to Northwestern will prevent voters from taking UW seriously come playoff selection time, in any close call with upper-tier teams from other conferences. If programs lose four times in a decade to Northwestern, they’re probably not beating Ohio State, certainly not on a regular basis. The Badgers aren’t challenged often in their own division, but Northwestern is one of the teams that give them all they can handle. They’ll need to up their game in this contest when the next decade begins.