B5Q Blogopean Union: rough weekend for Badgers athletics

Good morning! This is going to be a daily(ish) post that discusses the goings on of the rest of the Big Ten Conference, and the country as needed. Much like the European Union, the Big Ten is a loosely confederated group of entities that sometimes have the same goals (like free movement of people between countries or not winning national titles in football or basketball) and sometimes accept new members that they later regret (Estonia or Rutgers).

We hope that you will use this post to comment on things happening around the conference and also as a sort of daily open thread to discuss breaking news or argue about Spotted Cow.

• After sweeping the Indiana schools on the road last weekend, the Badgers wrestling team was looking to finish the regular season strong with four straight home matches. Things, uh, did not go as planned. Wisconsin lost to No. 2 Penn State 29-10 on Friday night, which wasn’t exactly unexpected, but then on Sunday afternoon Wisconsin lost a shocker to unranked Michigan State at the Field House.

Seth Gross and Evan Wick continued to have excellent seasons but head coach Chris Bono did not mince words about how the rest of the team did.

“I’m not worried about their skill I’m worried about toughness. Tough positions, scoring at the end of periods, being a little tougher in practice, being a little tougher when you got a little nick or a little bruise. And learning how to work through tough situations in matches, in practice. We need our guys that are not the horses - our Evan Wicks, the Seth Gross, the guys that are highly ranked, they’re doing their jobs. They went out and got five wins from our five guys that have been winning all year.

We need someone to do something that they’re not supposed to do and we don’t have that right now. We’ve gotta go back and we’ve got to get a little tougher. Some guys are feeling sorry for themselves right now, it’s the end of the year. We gotta build them up, we gotta get a little bit tougher and we gotta get after it.”

Wisconsin has No. 18 Michigan up next this weekend and then close the regular season with No. 16 Northern Iowa the following week. So there is still time to right the ship before the conference championships, but not a lot of time.

• Daryl Watts is pretty clearly the best women’s hockey player in the country but even having her on the team couldn’t stop the Badgers from losing to Minnesota State 3-1 on Saturday. This snapped their five game winning streak on which they had only given up six goals.

Wisconsin outshot Minnesota State 36-11, but the Mavericks goalie was impenetrable for most of the game. The loss snapped a 28-game unbeaten streak against Minnesota State that dated back to March 2, 2014.

• According to Greg Gard after the game, and also the official team Twitter account, the players want to wear the throwback jerseys again this year. I think they looked pretty clean and I would love to see them again this year. What say you?

• The Badgers didn’t win the whole weekend against Ohio State as the women’s team fell in Columbus 82-74. Abby Laszewski scored 26 points to set a career-high in scoring, breaking her previous record of 25 points that she recorded last week against Minnesota.

Wisconsin is 3-10 in conference, which puts them in twelfth place, and they have a brutal end of the season schedule coming up. They have five games left in the season, and while three of them are at home, four of them are against teams in the top-five in the conference.

• Congratulations to Chris Orr on his Master of Science degree.

Also congrats on making quarterbacks’ lives miserable all last season. Orr wasn’t invited to the NFL Combine but some team is going to get a steal of a player if they paid any attention to college football this year.

• After losing their opening game of the season, the softball team rattled off four straight wins in the season opening tournament at Florida Atlantic. In the final game of the tourney, the Badgers dominated Bethune-Cookman (for the second time) 4-0.

Jolie Fish and freshman Fiona Girardot each had their first taters of the season in the win and Kayla Konwent had eight hits off of 13 at-bats for the whole weekend. The Badgers head to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for the Big Ten/ACC Challenge next weekend to take on Louisville and UNC in two double-headers.

• Showalter, Brust stuck in elevator. LMAOOOOOOOO

• The Badgers battled back in the third period against Michigan on Saturday but lost 5-3. After losing 8-4 on Friday night as well, Wisconsin has lost five games in a row and sit squarely in last place in the B1G.

During their five game losing streak, the Badgers haven’t given up fewer than four goals in any of the games. There is something wrong with this team and one would imagine some difficult conversations will be had in the offseason.