B5Q Blogopean Union: here come the menaces to sobriety

Good morning or maybe afternoon! This is going to be a weekly(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.

• Not only are Wisconsin Badgers offensive linemen talented, they are also durable...and big...and talented.

• I’m pretty sure the month of August is usually a dead period for recruiting so this isn’t as big of a deal as it may seem.

• Pretty good odds for the Badgers here. If anyone puts money on Michigan, however, please just send it to me instead.

• I do NOT understand what happened in the NHL Draft Lottery Friday night where a team, TBD, won the lottery and will be drafting first. Absolute insanity. Anyways, current Badger Dylan Holloway should be drafted in the first round, provided there aren’t anymore crazy rule changes where the first round only becomes, like, four picks or something.

• We are also using this for our season preview post.

• The ‘CROOTIN CANNONS fired for the volleyball team at the end of the week, as the Badgers picked up the first member of their 2022 class.

Punzel has a really nice write up about Wrobel over on Madison.com but one key thing to note is that Wrobel had a tough list of schools to beat which included Illinois, Nebraska, Florida, Penn State and Northwestern.

• Rose Lavelle was rated as the woman of the match after leading the Washington Spirit to a 2-1 win over Chicago Red Stars in the opening match of the NWSL Challenge Cup. Here is the highlight of her match opening goal.

• Four Badgers were invited to the Hockey Canada National Development Team Summer Virtual Camp. Those players are Sophie Shirley, Grace Shirley, Brette Pettet and Daryl Watts.

Athletes will participate in at-home strength and conditioning plans, mental performance plans and check-ins, nutrition, dry-land skills, skating simulations, team-building activities, short-term international competition preparation and one-on-one coaching to continue their Team Canada experience in preparation for potential future international tournaments.

• Black Shoe Diaries seems to think PSU would steamroll the Badgers if they were to play this year in the B1G Title game.
• Northwestern now has the No. 3 recruiting class in 2021 for basketball. I, uh, don’t know what to say about this.
• 5-star 2021 center Chet Holmgren (Minneapolis, Minn) cut his list down to seven schools and three B1G teams, Ohio State, Minnesota and Michigan made it.
• New Jersey native, TE Jovani Haskins, transfers to Rutgers from West Virginia.
• Crimson Quarry is mad online about the BTN All-Decade basketball teams.
• Illinois picked up a late member for their 2020 basketball recruiting class, 7-foot Brandon Lieb (Deerfield, Ill.).