As hard as it may be to believe, I missed watching the first two Badger games of the year. I probably could have found a way to watch both, but it wasn't convenient and I was still trying to find my bearings here.
But after getting home before midnight Saturday night here, I decided I wasn't going to miss Wisconsin's first big test of the 2010 campaign. So I set my alarm for 4:15 a.m. - yep a.m. - and no that's not a misprint.
After clearing the sleep from my eyes I set about looking for a link to a stream of the game. I was a bit concerned because I didn't find one before bed, but at last I tracked one down. Excited, I clicked on it and was pumped to see it work, only to find it was the Minnesota game!
I scurried to another website that had a lot of different games, refreshed the page and voila there were a couple of streaming options, and the first one worked. It was sort of surreal to be watching the game under complete cover of darkness as I knew friends back home were enjoying a nice late afternoon kick.
I got a bad feeling in my gut as Wisconsin was unable to capitalize off a nice opening drive, and the feeling turned worse as Arizona State marched right down the field. Fortunately, they too came away with nothing as their senior kicker missed a chip shot.
Wisconsin again left points on the board as a potential touchdown drive stalled and the Badgers had to settle for a field goal. Then the trend of terrible special teams performances reared its ugly head again for UW as Arizona State housed the kick off to seize their first lead.
The rest of the half wasn't pretty for the Badgers, but they looked to head into the locker room with a 13-10 lead after a nifty, long scoring march capped by a great pass and catch from Scott Tolzien to Lance Kendricks. Unfortunately, with seconds remaining in the half, Wisconsin still had to had to kick off (this after the aforementioned kickoff return for a score and a punt return that was called back on a penalty). And Arizona State almost made Wisconsin pay by almost scoring on a return again. Luckily for Wisconsin redshirt freshman Dez Southward got a hand on the Sun Devils' return man and Shelton Johnson knocked him at about the half-yard line to preserve the team's slim lead.
I quickly fashioned up a scrambled egg breakfast at half, again feeling strange to be eating breakfast during a 2:30 CT game.
In the second half, Arizona State tied it up, but Wisconsin started to assert itself as John Clay got things going on the ground, capping a long drive with a 19-yard scamper to put Wisconsin back in the lead. But as well as the Badgers moved the ball at times throughout the game, they couldn't put the nail in the Sun Devils' coffin. Arizona State took advantage. After stuffing Clay on a third-and-three attempt, Wisconsin was forced to give the ball back up with just under eight minutes to play. The Sun Devils promptly put together quite possibly their best drive of the day, marching 77 yards in 3:34 for the apparent tying score. But on the extra-point attempt Jay Valai knifed under a blocker, leaped over a leg and blocked the would-be tying point after. And thanks to a key personal foul on Arizona State, some nice runs by Clay and the Tolzien-Kendricks connection, Wisconsin was able to run out the clock and sneak away with a 20-19 victory.
Relieved with victory I went back to bed for a nap! But I woke just two hours later with the itch to watch some more football, so I saddled back up to the computer and watched Auburn pull out an overtime win, Michigan State shock Notre Dame with a fake field goal for a touchdown in overtime and see Iowa climb out of a self-induced crater of a whole, only to lose to Arizona in the desert in the end. Overall, I didn't do much today, but it was a good day.
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