BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — Conventional wisdom says there was a defining moment in the regular season for the Wisconsin football team, but when?
UW played a school-record five opponents ranked in the Associated Press top 10 at the time of the meeting, all for the opportunity to play another.
The sixth-rated Badgers (10-2 overall) will have that chance Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis when they duel with eighth-ranked Penn State (10-2) for the Big Ten Conference championship.
Somewhere along the line, Wisconsin coaches and players had a transcendent experience, but at what point?
Was it beating a projected national champion in the season opener?
Was it going on the road and knocking off the defending Big Ten champion to open the league season?
Was it going on the road to beat an archrival and end a two-game losing streak?
Was it staging a furious second-half comeback to prevail in the regular-season finale?
UW junior wide receiver Jazz Peavy was helpful, but he didn't exactly embrace the spirit of the project.
"This entire season's been a turning point," he said. "There's been a lot of things this season that allowed us to show people that we're a great team and we belong where we are right now."
You could make a case that multiple junctures served as defining moments.
Some would say it was the season opener at Lambeau Field in Green Bay when the unranked Badgers emerged with a 16-14 victory over then-fifth-ranked LSU.
Senior safety Leo Musso said that upset win over the Tigers — ESPN The Magazine predicted they'd win the national title — established an important mindset in the UW locker room.
On the opening defensive play, standout sophomore inside linebacker Chris Orr was felled by a season-ending knee injury. Into the void stepped unheralded Ryan Connelly, who played like he was the starter.
"When Chris went down that was a shocker, but it was that next man in mentality," Musso said, noting that Connelly "didn't miss a beat."
As the season progressed, the Badgers lost more than 50 man-games to injury and saw two other front-liners — junior inside linebacker Jack Cichy and junior kicker Rafael Gaglianone — go down with season-ending injuries.
"That's the MO of this team," Musso said. "It's the next man up. If you're the two or the three (on the depth chart), you're training like you're the one and you're expecting to get in and eager to prove what you've got."
Senior cornerback Sojourn Shelton acknowledged that Wisconsin's performance in the inaugural Lambeau Field College Classic was a big moment, "but we knew we had so much more ahead."
Three weeks later, the Badgers opened Big Ten play with a 30-6 thumping of Michigan State — their first win at Spartan Stadium since 2002 — but that gave way to back-to-back losses to fourth-ranked Michigan (14-7) and second-rated Ohio State (30-23 in overtime).
"LSU was a start to a great journey," Shelton said. "I think the Ohio State game was such a turning point.
"It was like, 'Guys, if we're truly going to accomplish what we're talking about, we can't be all talk. We've got to put it into action.'
"That's when guys put everything in the basket and began rocking and rolling."
The Badgers closed out the regular season with six straight victories. The run began with a 17-9 decision at archrival Iowa and a 23-17 overtime win over Nebraska, which was ranked seventh at the time.
That gave way to a 21-7 victory at Northwestern, a place UW hadn't won since 1999, and consecutive blowouts vs. Illinois (48-3) and Purdue (49-20).
Wisconsin players went into the regular-season finale against Minnesota at Camp Randall in a cloudy frame of mind, which made them vulnerable. Not only was it senior day, the Badgers had already clinched the Big Ten West Division title and came out for the 126-year-old rivalry game noticeably flat.
That translated to a 17-7 halftime deficit — the largest for UW in its last 23 games — and genuine concern from the masses that the Gophers would regain possession of Paul Bunyan's Axe for the first time since 2003.
"The defining moment was everybody stepping up and doing what they could, especially coming out after halftime," Wisconsin senior tailback Corey Clement said.
Motivated and refocused thanks to halftime speeches from Musso and junior outside linebacker T.J. Watt, the Badgers dominated the last two periods and set the stage for a 31-17 triumph.
"That's probably the biggest adversity we've faced all year, so when it smacked us in the face, it was a wake-up call to try and get this right," Clement said. "We still had time on the board. As senior leaders, we had to do the best we could."
UW senior tailback and co-captain Dare Ogunbowale said the season didn't have a turning point per se, but said there were multiple defining moments.
"The LSU game was defining because it kind of set the tone for the season for us," he said. "Nobody thought we'd win that game but us. We went in there and did exactly what we knew we'd do. That set the tone for the rest of the season."
Ogunbowale said the loss to Ohio State "opened our eyes and gave us that extra sense of urgency that we needed."
The rousing comeback against Minnesota "was probably the biggest game for us with everything that was at stake."
Now the stakes are even higher for the Badgers. Their goal all along — to win the Big Ten title — is within reach.
Another defining moment awaits.
