PISCATAWAY, N.J. — It may be cliche but Rutgers football head coach Greg Schiano simply wants to be 1-0 at the end of Saturday’s game at Wisconsin.
That means that marching into one of the best environments in college football or going up against a traditional powerhouse means very little to him. Instead, the head coach of Rutgers (4-1, 1-1 Big Ten) simply is focused on a tough Wisconsin (3-1, 1-0 Big Ten) team that is balanced and complete.
A team that is in their first year under head coach Luke Fickell has not looked like a rebuilding program, not by any stretch.
The game has the potential to springboard Rutgers if Schiano’s team were to come away with a road win. It would certainly validate his program’s rebuild and it would provide a singular point of achievement against a team that is regularly playing bowl games and in contention for the Big Ten Championship Game.
But anything more than that is lost on Schiano.
“It’s a big game. I’d be very, very careful in looking at that and saying, this is an iconic brand or this is a big win or whatever you want to call it,” Schiano said on Monday.
“We have one goal: That’s to be 1-0 at the end of this Wisconsin season. It’s hard. We have got a lot of work to do. We’re in the middle of it right now putting it together. We as a staff and as a whole organization and as a team, we have a lot of work to do between now and Saturday.
“They are very good, so we are going to do everything we can to go out there and like I said be 1-0 when we leave that stadium. They are good. Really good.”
Wisconsin is coming off an early bye week. They beat Purdue in Week 4 in their Big Ten opener.
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Phil Longo, who is in his first year as offensive coordinator at Wisconsin, has this offense humming. They are currently fourth in the Big Ten in total offense and in scoring offense.
Braelon Allen is fifth in the Big Ten with 371 rushing yards. He also has six rushing touchdowns.
“They do a great job. Phil does a great job. Their offense is hard to stop,” Schiano said.
“Multidimensional, people get, when they hear about tempo and they hear about air raid, they think it’s just throw it all over the lot. They do a great job running the football. They have several different schemes that they run the football with, so it’s going to be a huge challenge for all those reasons, and the biggest reason is good players.”