Wisconsin closes week out with third scrimmage

MADISON—Just a week remains until the Wisconsin Badgers annual spring game, and for the third Friday in a row, head coach Paul Chryst’s squad scrimmaged.

While the offense looked sharp in the early team drills and red zone 7-on-7 sessions, the defense for the most part appeared to limit their counterparts during the scrimmage portion of the two-and-a-half hour practice.

Redshirt sophomore quarterback Alex Hornibrook completed a deep pass to wide receiver Jazz Peavy on his first pass in team drills, and threw a solid strike to George Rushing in that same session.

In red zone 7-on-7s, the media consensus appeared to be eight of 10 for Hornibrook, with over a handful of would-be touchdowns.

After that, however, it appeared the defense clamped down, with the first-team offense not really in sync for a chunk of the scrimmage.

Aside from a couple of touchdowns thrown by Hornibrook, along with a few touchdown drives led by back-ups Jack Coan and Kare’ Lyles, the defensive units appeared to play quite well.

Safety Joe Ferguson broke up one pass and nearly had an interception on another. There was a little bit of charisma on the pass break-up, as the redshirt senior’s had a solid spring.

Observations

• Running back Bradrick Shaw returned to practice on Friday. It appeared inside linebacker Mason Stokke and wide receiver Deron Harrell were unavailable.
• At outside linebacker, lot of looks with Zack Baun, Leon Jacobs and Andrew Van Ginkel. Garret Dooley’s had a more than solid fall camp, and with Jacobs earning some first-team reps now, those four could put themselves in position for the ones pushing for more reps heading into fall camp.
• At cornerback, looked like redshirt freshman Dontye Carriere-Williams was working in the nickel package. Nick Nelson and Derrick Tindal appeared to get the initial reps as first-team early in practice but reps mostly appeared to go towards the younger guys as the scrimmage wore on. As BadgerBlitz.com’s John Veldhuis noted in his recap ($), looked like maybe Tindal took a fall (something I didn’t see) but guessing it was just being cautious as he was still on the sideline and was walking around fine after practice.
• It seemed like there was a lot of mixing between first-team and the back-ups as the scrimmage wore on. Hornibrook would be commanding the offense, but there’d be back-ups in certain positions. For example, looked like Brett Connors received some reps at left tackle during that time, rather than redshirt sophomore David Edwards.
• That said, it was hard to get a read on who really popped and who didn’t on Friday. Granted, as B5Q has stated many times, this is just spring. Many can use this time to gain momentum for their standing heading into summer conditioning and fall camp, but this is a time to test their personal limits.
• Say will about a redshirt freshman who just converted to running back, but Garrett Groshek seems to have a nice step when running the ball. He had a couple of nice runs and showed a decent burst. How that translates this year or next, with Taiwan Deal coming back from injury and competing with fellow redshirt freshman Sam Brodner and incoming New Jersey product Jonathan Taylor, we’ll see.
• UPDATE: Kicker Rafael Gaglianone was five of six for field goals, according to the Wisconsin State Journal’s Jason Galloway seen below. Fond du Lac native and back-up Zach Hintze was either one for two or 0-for-1 (based on Jason Galloway’s stats below, may have been an extra point). Think Hintze has a pretty, pretty decent leg, as he missed a 49-yard field goal but had plenty of distance.