Tag: Nebraska Cornhuskers

As the 2019 season brings to a close another decade of college football, Badgers Wire 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 this decade. Next up is an examination of the Badgers’ record against one of the more recent additions to the Big Ten, Nebraska. This is a series Wisconsin has controlled since the Cornhuskers joined the league. Let’s take a look at the numbers. 

Using Stassen, Badgers Wire pulled up every result against Nebraska in the 2010s. The vast majority of the meetings between these two teams have taken place since 2011, a direct result of Nebraska’s new Big Ten membership. Prior to the past decade, UW and NU met twice in the 1970s (1973 and ‘74), in which the two schools split, and twice in the 1960s (1965 and ‘66), both Wisconsin losses. Then they also met in 1901 in Milwaukee. So, 2011-2019 represents 64 percent of their total meetings. This decade belonged to Wisconsin against the Cornhuskers. 

The Badgers have lost only once since in the decade to Nebraska. That loss came in 2012, and they avenged it by beating the absolute hell out of Nebraska in what has been NU’s only appearance in the Big Ten Championship Game. So, as gut-wrenching as the 30-27 loss was for Wisconsin in the 2012 regular season, beating the Huskers in a conference title game more than made up for it. 

If Nebraska head coach Scott Frost has the success he had at UCF, it’s only a matter of time before the Huskers will be competing with Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota for the West Division crown. Yet, Frost hasn’t shown he can move the Nebraska program forward. Wisconsin needs to stay the course and not give ground to a Nebraska program that can recruit with the best of them when the program is firing on all cylinders. 

Wisconsin has done a great job of keeping Nebraska quiet and impotent. Maintaining that reality in the 2020s — never giving the Huskers a chance to kick-start their attempt at a revival with an upset of the Badgers — is an important task for UW football.

Beating Minnesota yet again in 2015 — continuing what was then a 12-game winning streak over the Golden Gophers — certainly rated as a big highlight of Wisconsin’s 2015 season, the first under Paul Chryst. The best win might have been over USC in the Holiday Bowl, a game we looked at as part of our bowl memories series at Badgers Wire.

Yet, if one was to identify the most important win of the year — at least in terms of giving the program a continued sense of stability, something Badger fans have come to count on ever since Barry Alvarez established a true foothold — the win at Nebraska is probably the best answer.

Remember the 2012 season, the last one under Bret Bielema? That 2012 team did lose a bunch of games, but it wasn’t a 6-6 team which missed out on the Big Ten Championship Game in a year when Ohio State wasn’t eligible for postseason play. Wisconsin took advantage of the opportunity other Big Ten teams could have pounced on, but didn’t. That Wisconsin team found a measure of stability by beating Utah State early in the season. We noted that Wisconsin had just lost a 10-7 game to Oregon State and needed a confidence boost.

What might have happened if the Badgers hadn’t beaten Utah State in 2012? One shudders to think of the answer. It was similar in 2015 with the Nebraska game.

The week before going to Lincoln, Wisconsin lost 10-6 at home to Iowa, the team which would make its only Big Ten Championship Game appearance to date on the strength of that victory in Madison. Wisconsin might not have won the Big Ten West in 2015 had it beaten Nebraska, but in terms of maintaining the Barry Alvarez Wisconsin standard in Paul Chryst’s first season, that road trip to Lincoln was immensely important.

It was hardly an easy ride. Wisconsin was outrushed, 196-147. Joel Stave threw 50 (!) passes and completed only 24. Kicker Rafael Gaglianone missed two field goals… but he made the one that counted, a clutch 46-yard boot with 1:03 left for a 23-21 lead. The defense was able to thwart Nebraska in the final minute and preserve the kind of win which tells a first-year coach, “Hey, my kids will go to the wall for me. We got this.”

A total of 50 months have come and gone since that game. Paul Chryst has Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl and a very solid place. Yes, I’d say 2015 Nebraska was a darn important game in the past decade of Badger football.