Morning, all. I had definitely forgotten how the first defeat of the season tastes. Ugh. That is all. Anyway, here are your Badger Bits for Monday, October 4th.
Freshman running back James White's solid performance against Michigan State emerged as a bright spot after the Badgers' 34-24 defeat at the hands of Michigan State, according to Andy Baggot of Madison.com. White rushed for 98 yards and two touchdowns on 10 carries, on a day where MSU's rush defense held junior running back John Clay to 80 yards on 17 carries.
"I thought he did a good job all day," UW coach Bret Bielema said.
"I thought he (was) a nice changeup for us," Bielema said. "For us to move forward we just need to run the ball effectively against good run defense. MSU is one of those teams and we had mixed results."
White has been an impressive player in his first year at Wisconsin as the team's No. 2 option at running back. White already has six touchdowns and 367 yards in just five games so far, for an average of 8.3 yards per carry.
UPDATE: It looks as though White is getting consideration to become the starting running back over junior John Clay, who is the 2009 Big Ten offensive player of the year. Jeff Potrykus of the Journal-Sentinel has the story.
More Badger Bits after the jump!
Here's some more post-game wrap ups:
Third down failures were critical to the Badgers loss on Saturday, according to Tom Mulhern of Madison.com.
Tom Oates also says that there's plenty of blame to go around the team. Oates also mentioned that MSU out-Wisconsin'ed Wisconsin. (Yes I did just use our team as a verb. Pretty sweet, huh?)
Here's some reaction from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel to the Badgers being dropped to #20 in the AP poll and #19 in the USA Today coaches poll.
Dave Heller has some post-game notes of the streak-ending (and streak-furthering) variety.
Tex Western of 'Sixty Minutes. No Alibis. No regrets.' has a piece up about former Badgers currently in the NHL.
And in happier news, a replenished Wisconsin women's hockey team has started the season by sweeping the two game set with RPI. The women suffered through a 'rebuilding' year in the 2009-10 season, as head coach Mark Johnson and several players were with the USA Women's Olympic team in Vancouver.
5 days until homecoming!