For most of the season, the Badger defense has looked for that complete game, one where it came out and dictated the terms of a game to an FBS offense.
On Saturday, that complete game finally arrived against a balanced offense that had been especially hot over the past two weeks. When sophomore defensive end J.J. Watt swatted Purdue freshman quarterback Caleb TerBush's fourth down pass to the turf at his own ten yard line late in the fourth, Wisconsin secured its first Big Ten shutout in a decade.
After two difficult second halves against Iowa and Ohio State, the strong performance was a welcome change.
""It was great to pitch a shutout, but I think it was even greater because we held them at that goal line stand there at the end … that was like the icing on the cake,"" senior safety Chris Maragos said. ""It'd be nice to shut them out, but the way that we did it at the end there, that really spoke volumes to the guys on the defense.""
The 37-0 win was made more impressive by the fact that Purdue had run all over Illinois the previous week and threw for over 280 yards a week before that.
Senior Boilermaker quarterback Joey Elliot was out of sync with his receivers all day and threw for just 59 yards and a pick before getting pulled for TerBush. Purdue was equally ineffective on the ground, gaining 60 yards on a meager 2.1 yards per carry.
The Wisconsin players were pleased with the balanced defensive effort that produced three sacks, six tackles for loss and gave up only 141 yards.
""We've been good on the run all year so we were confident we could stop that again this game. We just had to focus on their passing attack,"" freshman linebacker Chris Borland said. ""Traditionally Purdue is a vaunted passing attack so we just had to make sure we handled their receivers and contained their quarterback who can run.""
When asked if his team had done anything wrong on defense, head coach Bret Bielema thought for a moment, but he could only point to one small flaw, a third and seven Purdue managed to convert in the second quarter.
For the Badgers, Borland stood out, making big plays all over the field. Borland, who was starting his first career game in place of the injured Mike Taylor, recovered a pair of fumbles, one that he forced, and racked up four tackles.
""That kid is unbelievable,"" Bielema said of Borland. ""He's a good football player. I think the offensive coaches want him at full back or running back and I want to play him on every special teams and [defensive coordinator] Dave [Doeren] wants him on defense on every play.""
Noticeably absent from the Purdue offensive attack was a reliance on the shotgun formation and screen passes. Those were heavily featured during Joe Tiller's tenure, but on Saturday, the Boilermakers ran much of their offense from the I-formation and only ran a handful of screens.
Purdue's longest play of the day came on a 16-yard screen pass to senior Aaron Valentin.
""I expected more screens, I didn't really think they were going to keep trying to run on us, but they did,"" senior defensive end O'Brien Schofield said. ""That's what they felt that they could do against us and we just read our keys and shut that down.""
