Wisconsin Football: Badgers look for strong finish with win over Purdue

Wisconsin football looks to right the ship in the final weeks of the season, starting with a win over the Purdue Boilermakers in Week 12.

Wisconsin’s 2018 season has been disappointing to say the absolute least.

Starting the season off as the No. 4 team nationally, the Badgers were looking to be a College Football Playoff contender after narrowly missing out on the final four last season. They rattled off two wins to start the season in dominating fashion against Western Kentucky and New Mexico and their season drastically change when BYU came to town. The Cougars entered Madison, Wisconsin and handed the Badgers their first home loss since 2003 when Iowa took home the Heartland Trophy against a sub-par Badgers team.

The losses continued to rack up from there with losses to Michigan, Penn State and Northwestern. The loss to Northwestern proved to be the most fatal to the Badgers as the Wildcats would go on to claim the Pac 12 West in a year where the Badgers were heavy favorites to repeat. This wasn’t done without their struggles, however.

The Badgers have lost key contributors Scott Nelson and Reggie Pearson at times and lost Nose Tackle Olive Sagapolu for the season due to an arm surgery. Depth at running back has faltered with Bradrick Shaw and Taiwan Deal going down and the biggest injury of all seems to be the loss of Alex Hornibrook.

Hornibrook has missed the three of the last four games with concussion-like symptoms and in those three games they’ve gone 2-2 with wins over Rutgers and Illinois but lost to Penn State and Northwestern. The Southpaw veteran quarterback is questionable to play this week against Purdue due to concussion protocol but was throwing in practice earlier this week.

Purdue looked abnormally tragic on offense this past week against Minnesota. David Blough went into this game averaging 9.17 yards per attempt in his seven starts and left Minneapolis last week having thrown 4.6 yards per attempt. They aren’t going to win the Big Ten West, but Purdue is still looking to make a bowl game. With a win this weekend, Jeff Brohm will have the Boilermakers in a bowl in consecutive seasons for the first time in six years.

Will Wisconsin finish the year off strong with a win over Purdue in pursuit of an eight-win season or will they drop their fourth straight road game?

Date: Saturday, Nov. 17
Time: 3:30 p.m. ET
Location: West Lafayette, Ind.
Venue: Ross-Ade Stadium
TV: Big Ten Network
Live Stream: BTN2Go or FuboTV

Keys to Victory

Wisconsin needs to be able to win without Hornibrook. As much as I didn’t expect to ever have to utter those words they are true. Wisconsin relies heavily on Jonathan Taylor which is the correct move for them because he is a fantastic player. The problem is, they don’t have a good enough quarterback behind Hornibrook to open up running lanes and keep defenses somewhat honest.

If Hornibrook is out again this week, Jack Coan either needs to pick up some of the sack or Paul Chryst has to get creative in what schemes he’s running.

Purdue needs to take advantage of this incredibly one-dimensional offense and make the Badgers pass. If you want to dedicate seven or eight guys on every play to stopping the pass or trying to get after Coan, it might not be the craziest of ideas to do so. Wisconsin’s defense is good but it is also really mortal. The key to beating them is to pound the rock all game long and if DJ Knox gets involved this week, he can open up the air for Blough and Rondale Moore to really deal some damage.

Betting Odds

Courtesy of OddsShark

Points Spread: Purdue -4
Over/Under: 52

Prediction

Wisconsin comes out and looks better than they have on offense over the past few weeks against a porous Boilermaker defense but the missing/injured Alex Hornibrook causes the downfall for the Badgers who give up points late in a loss.

Final Score: Purdue 24, Wisconsin 20