The UW football team has a lot of expectations to live up to (or exceed) this upcoming season. With the departure of many starters on both sides of the ball, including notable NFL Draft prospects Antajj Hawthorne and Erasmus James, the Badgers have work to do and experience to gain before Sept. 3.
One area where the team has sustained relatively little damage to the lineup is special teams. Both the placekicker, sophomore Taylor Melhaff, and punter, redshirt sophomore Ken DeBauche, are looking to return to their No. 1 positions on the depth chart, with Melhaff possibly assuming field goal and extra point duties with the loss of last season's senior kicker Mike Allen.
Both Melhaff and DeBauche are coming back after solid seasons and looking to improve on last season's numbers.
Melhaff, a true freshman last season, assumed kickoff duties and averaged a respectful 61.6-yard average with 18 touchbacks. Clearly power is not an issue, and Melhaff is well aware of this fact. His main goal through this spring and summer is his accuracy and finesse.
\My leg strength has improved a lot since I came here,"" he said. ""What I have to do now is work on my accuracy, dropping it right in front of the end zone.""
However, his spot is far from guaranteed after his performance in the April 16 spring game. Head coach Barry Alvarez was not impressed with what he saw this past Saturday.
""I don't think we have a kicker right now,"" Alvarez said. ""It's wide open. We've got two walk-ons coming in and we'll see who kicks best during two-a-days, because we certainly didn't get very good kicking during spring, and today was a prime example. So we'll allow the two other walk-ons that we have coming in to be right in the battle [to] see who kicks the best during two-a-days. I don't feel very good about it now.""
This seems hard to believe after seeing Melhaff's prep credentials, including being rated the nation's No. 1 kicker by www.Rivals.com, being a Riddell first-team All-American and a USA Today second-team All-American. There's obviously potential there that Alvarez recognized; one can only hope Melhaff comes out of this funk a more accurate and more confident kicker than before.
DeBauche, however, seems primed to step back into his role, coming off of a number of honors for last season's performance, including being UW's Special Teams Player of the Year and being named to Sporting News Freshman All-Big Ten Team.
By all accounts he earned these honors, putting up six punts of 50 or more yards and dropping 17 punts inside the opponents' 20-yard line, in addition to kicking a career-best punt of 57 yards against Arizona.
As far as the special teams unit goes, it seems not much has changed and the special teams coach Brian Murphy is sticking to their mantra.
""The coaches are always saying that young guys have to step up,"" Melhaff said.
In no other unit is this more visable than in special teams.
Improvement must be a focus in preparation for this season more so than in past seasons because, in addition to losing a sizeable portion of the starters, the remaining returning members of the team are generally younger and significantly lacking in game time experience.
