This Saturday the Cat's play their most important game of the year. If we lose to Wisconsin, especially by a wide margin, the pundits will simply say "Yes you can beat average teams, but except Stanford, every time you play a good team you get trounced." Win and then pundits are more likely to look at the Michigan and Iowa debacles as growing pains, anomalies or just a combination of tha Cat's having a bad game and our opponents having good games. Either way this game is so important because if we win it shows we CAN beat a good team on the road or without the benefit of a 9 am west coast time start at home. A 10-2 record with wins over Stanford, Duke, PSU and Wisky is impressive. I truly believe the Cats are going to win this game. I think between Thorson and our running game we can move the ball. I also think we will thump the Badgers on defense. Wisconsin does not have a good offense and our defense is for real. Imagine just how good our defense would be if they weren't out in the field all game long in terrible field position to start!
Most important game of the year
- Thread starter mybrotha
- Start date
I think we'll see turnovers on Saturday. It's a matter of whether more of them come from Stave or from Thorson.
Gotta be honest...if we end up 9-3 with a win over the Illini after getting trounced by Wisconsin (as we usually do at Camp Randall), I'm not really concerned with what the pundits say. That we would have accomplished this with a freshman QB and given preseason expectations, I'm sitting pretty satisfied with the season.
Someone can accuse me of accepting mediocrity, but I don't really care about that either.
It's actually relieving to go into a game expecting to lose. A surprise victory in those cases is that much sweeter.
Sorry,but the Iowa game was the most important. We win the Iowa game and we would have had a clear path to the BT Title game
Villox, this is not the Barry Alveraz or BrettBeliema Badgers. This Badger team does has to running backs hurt and will play a Frosh. They are decent,don't get me wrong. But I doubt they will overpower us like Iowa.Beathard is the best QB in the BT. Kid makes zero mistakes,like Aaron Rodgers
I agree this is the most important game of the year, since I live in Wisconsin. There's nothing sweeter than the look I get the rest of the year wearing my NU gear around town after a Wildcats win over their beloved Bucky.
Fully agree. I don't like the "trounced" idea, and I don't think Bucky is good enough to "trounce" us, but in my opinion, this is the least important game of the year, given prior results. We can't win the division, we've already won 8 games, we MUST beat ILL, and if so, we would have a winning B1G record, don't care about bowl placement, so in what way is this more important than, say, avoiding a loss to crummy Purdue, beating everyone's darling, Stanford, beating a PSU team that is roughly equivalent to Bucky, winning at Nebraska after numerous debacles against them?
Ok I will give this an asterisk for trounced*. Regardless, I don't think it is that important, but if we keep it reasonably close, seriously like 28-10 even, then I really don't think the game is that important.
I actually think the Stanford game was the most important game of the year as it established that NU came to play this year. If they'd gone out and sleepwalked through that game as theyi did against Cal (interesting that they overcame the dreaded time differential to beat us) last year, it could have set the stage for another uninspiring start to the season.
The Cal game was at 2:30 CDT, or 12:30 PDT, so no dreaded time differential last season.......
It's still a two-hour differential, any way you cut it. Some Penn State fans were actually griping that the 11 a.m. kickoff (a whole hour earlier than EST) might have been somewhat responsible for their slow start in our game. Losers always have convenient excuses.
Huh??? If the game was played in State College, it would have kicked-off at the exact same time, noon eastern/11:00 central. Just plain stupid.
Plus we had just "fallen back" to Standard Time the week prior so it should have FELT like 1pm eastern
Board monitors, where are you? When I posited prior to the game that the Minny game was the most important game of the year, someone ( I forget who ) admonished me that the next game is always the most important game and that ended the thread.
Now, I will grant you that mybrotha has likely forgotten more about college ball than I will ever learn, but anyway thought I'd just whinge at bit.
For the record, I agree with those who think that NU will win tomorrow. Let it snow...
Now, I will grant you that mybrotha has likely forgotten more about college ball than I will ever learn, but anyway thought I'd just whinge at bit.
For the record, I agree with those who think that NU will win tomorrow. Let it snow...
Enough on Thorson being a frosh, esp. since he's a RS frosh.
Other teams are doing similar things w/ a true forsh at QB.
Other than at QB - this team has more experience and depth than just about any recent NU team.
If the 'Cats get pummeled - would be very disappointed.
This is the weakest UW O-line in yrs and at best, Clement would be hobbled and they are also missing one of their top receiving threats.
If the 'Cats lose fairly handily, places more credence that the line play just isn't there to challenge the better teams in the conference (notwithstanding the issue w/ the passing game).
Enough of this "other team's freshmen are doing well so ours should too". With all this experience, I presume you were predicting an 8+ win season? He's still a first year starter...when was the last time we had a good team with one of those?
I've just been scarred by our last 2 visits to Madison. There is almost no result that would surprise me today, well except us maybe blowing THEM out.
Well after this game we are all talking about how big a win this was! This is what I meant. After being abused by two powerful big ten teams, we beat another power big ten team on the road. Yes our offense was terrible, but the defensive effort was nothing less than dominating! The reason why this was the most important game of the year was because it showed not only the pundits but our fans and for that matter our players that they can beat a traditional power on the road late in the year. Well done Cats, well done!
Well except for the part where both opposing fans and even our own are looking for excuses to explain away how it somehow wasn't legitimate.
On the ESPN game comment board, some Wisky troll was saying nothing about Northwestern was superior in the game today. An NU supporter brought up the NU defense, and pointed out that Wisconsin had minus-26 yards rushing, their worst record in all their many years. The troll responded 'you are just cherry-picking stats that don't mean anything."
Seems like this loss might sting for a while for some of their fans.
Like -26 rushing yards doesn't mean anything to a traditional power rushing team like Wisconsin. Some people need other hobbies.
And they could have quit on the season after blowing the game against Iowa. They didn't.
They beat Nebraska with a great game from Thorson (90% of offense), beat 6-2 PSU, beat Purdue with a nice drive orchestrated by Thorson after he pretty much had a bad game until he was yanked, and now we beat 8-2 Wisconsin with a mistake-free performance from Thorson under conditions where mistake-free football was crucial for winning the game.
You know WAY more about football than I, Glades. Need some help from you. Surrounded by Badger fans here, I will be having some friendly chats in coming days. Please advise which of these would also represent cherry-picking and/or be meaningless:
1. 175 yard differential in yardage on the ground.
2. Six QB sacks versus one.
3. Five turnovers caused versus just one.
4. UW aided by 7 penalties called on NU, versus 2 on the Badgers.
5. Four minute (+15%) NU advantage in time of possession.
This is my point Glades and thanks for getting it is that the Iowa and Michigan games were of course important and anyone could see that, but the Wisky game was critical because it show our grit and greatly reduces what naysayers can argue about. Some folks will say who cares about pundits, hmmm how about rankings=bowl selections=more practice time and better recruits.
It's that quality education at W that articulated that immensely intelligent comment. Some people just crack me up!
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