Josh Gasser put on an absolute dazzler Saturday afternoon, as he racked up 35 points, while Duje Dukan chipped in seven of his own.
Although the now-graduated guard’s final scoring output sounds like the stuff of some mangled parallel universe, Gasser’s 35-point onslaught is in fact very real. The catch is that Gasser, who averaged 7.3 points per game during his career at Wisconsin, and Dukan were honorary coaches in this year’s installment of the football team’s annual spring game.
Gasser “oversaw” the first-team offense and second-team defense, while Dukan was charged with “guiding” the second-team offense and first-team defense. The result was a 35-7 Gasser victory in what was essentially a glorified practice that head coach Paul Chryst called a benchmark before the regular season.
“As you go through it you’ve got four phases to get ready for a season,” Chryst said. “Winter conditioning, spring ball, we’re done with those. We’ve got to finish up in school and one more week in the weight room and then guys will—after finals will go home and come back, we’ve got to have a great summer and a great fall camp so we can be as ready as we can for the season.”
The Badgers should consider themselves fortunate that they are only halfway through Chryst’s preparation metric. Although the game did provide a look at some areas of concern moving forward, there were plenty of positives as well.
Junior Leon Jacobs and redshirt freshman T.J. Edwards continued their already impressive showings at inside linebacker this spring, as they registered eight and nine tackles, respectively, and displayed their ability to close on the ball quickly. Senior outside linebacker Joe Schobert asserted that the Jacobs-Edwards contingent will be a valuable asset throughout the season.
“I think Leon and T.J. inside both can run and are both very athletic guys and then me and Vince [Biegel] on the outside, same thing,” Schobert said. “I think we have a chance to be even more athletic than we were last year. We lose some big guys inside, [Marcus] Trotter and [Derek] Landisch, but athletically I think we can take another step up and if everybody works together to get the scheme down we can be just as good if not better than last year.”
Elsewhere on the defense, redshirt sophomore Chikwe Obasih sparked the line’s pass rush, contributing 2.5 sacks and two forced fumbles from his defensive end position. He figures to be an anchor at the edge of this year’s defense, so it was encouraging to see him break out in a very noticeable fashion.
Junior running back Corey Clement didn’t suit up for the game, allowing redshirt junior Dare Ogunbowale, redshirt freshman Taiwan Deal and redshirt junior Serge Trezy to handle the bulk of the carries. Ogunbowale looked the best out of the trio, netting 89 yards on 11 carries and two touchdowns, including a 55-yard score in the second quarter. Deal managed a solid 76 yards on 15 carries. He nearly broke off a long touchdown run after finding open space near the sideline, but he was denied by a shoestring tackle that held him to a 14-yard gain. Trezy’s inexperience at the position showed, as he was constantly stonewalled at the line of scrimmage and averaged 2.8 yards on his 17 carries.
The quarterbacks rotated nearly every series, so it was difficult for any one of them to develop any sort of rhythm. Redshirt senior Joel Stave led just one drive, which he punctuated with a sleek 17-yard touchdown pass to junior Robert Wheelwright in the corner of the end zone.
Wheelwright also hauled in a 20-yard touchdown from redshirt junior Bart Houston, and he finished with a game-high 79 receiving yards on seven receptions.
UW’s lack of offensive line depth stuck out the most. The graduation of tackle Rob Havenstein and guards Kyle Costigan and Dallas Lewallen left Chryst with enormous voids to fill, and redshirt senior center Dan Voltz’s recent ankle injury has only made matters worse.
That left redshirt senior tackle Tyler Marz, redshirt junior guard Walker Williams, redshirt freshman center Michael Deiter, redshirt freshman guard Beau Benzschawel and redshirt sophomore tackle Hayden Biegel to anchor the first-team offense. The starters, as well as the second-stringers, struggled to give the quarterbacks ample time to work in the pocket and failed to consistently open rushing lanes. Chryst attributed the unit’s overall shaky performance to its lack of experience together.
“The one thing that as we were going through it, not a lot of continuity, a lot of shuffling, and that’s hard on an offensive line,” Chryst said. “I think that we’ve just got to learn from what they did this spring and got to be better.”
Overall, it would be a mistake to read too far into the outcome of the spring game. Wisconsin utilized a vanilla playbook on both sides of the ball, and a scrimmage built around first-teamers taking on second-teamers just can’t reveal very much about the team. If anything, the spring game represented the midpoint between the true offseason, which is used for talent evaluation, and the upcoming preparation for the Sept. 15 opener with Alabama. Spring practices are now finished, and the road to Arlington lies ahead.
