UW Next Opponent: Minnesota from Milwaukee Journal

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Madison — The players on the Minnesota football team are ready.
They've been ready for this game since a 20-7 loss to Wisconsin last season in Minnesota. The 13-point loss was the Gophers' 10th in a row in the series, which began in 1890.
The Gophers have not possessed Paul Bunyan's Axe since 2003 — after a 37-34 victory in the Metrodome.
"You talk to fans in Minnesota and they get chills when they think about that axe," Minnesota quarterback Mitch Leidner said. "They want that thing back there in Minnesota more than anything.
"It makes that rivalry so much more intense and so much fun."
Nothing ratchets the intensity level of a rivalry more than a winner-take-all game.
When Minnesota (8-3, 5-2 Big Ten) meets UW (9-2, 6-1) at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium, the West Division title will be on the line.
The last time the matchup held such significance was 1962, when the third-ranked Badgers defeated the No. 5 Gophers, 14-9, to clinch the league title outright.
"I've been here for three years and they beat us all three, so that makes me unhappy," UM senior tailback David Cobb said.
Cobb personifies the rise of the program under head coach Jerry Kill, who was hired before the 2011 season.
Minnesota finished 3-9 in Kill's first season, improved to 6-7 in 2012 and finished 8-5 last season.
Cobb rushed for 57 yards as a freshman in 2011, had only one carry for 8 yards as a sophomore but then exploded for 1,202 yards last season.
This season, Cobb is eighth in the nation in rushing with 1,430 yards and needs only 35 yards to break the program's single-season mark, set by Laurence Maroney in 2005. He leads the team in touchdowns with 12 and has accounted for 35.8% of Minnesota's offensive yards.

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/badg...her-attempt-at-axe-b99397341z1-283922201.html
 


"Perhaps the biggest change under Kill is that the Gophers are stronger on both lines and can hang physically with the better teams in the Big Ten.
"Our guys up front are just as fast and just as strong and capable of doing anything that any other team does," Cobb said.
The Minnesota and UW players battled for more than four quarters last season. That battle continued after the game when the Gophers formed a wall in front of the goal post near the Minnesota student section.
Kill's players didn't want to see the UW players hack away at the goal post with Paul Bun-yan's Axe.
"I was in the mix," UW tailback Melvin Gordon said, laughing. "Neither one of us like each other. Let's not try to sugarcoat it. They're taught to hate us. We're taught to hate them."
More than anything, the Minnesota players hate losing to UW.
"Of course talk is cheap," Cobb said when asked about the Minnesota players defending the goal post last season. "You have to back it up. That is what they've been doing. But if somebody comes into your house and beats you down in front of your home crowd the last thing you want is to see them chop the goal post down, too.
"But they've done it for several years in a row. This year we're looking for a change and we expect a change. When we play Wisconsin in Madison it will be a different result."
 

Someone should inform the Milwaukee Journal that it is no longer the Leaders and Legends Divisions.
 

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