Pioneer Press: Gophers, Badgers on different trajectories for 2018 season

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Three of the badgers offense lineman are on Phil Steel's all big ten first team, and one on the second. None of these guys were blue chippers coming in. They also have added some really good linebackers on the defensive side of the ball in recent years.

We have a much higher rated recruiting class than they do this year also.

They really develop players.
 

GopherVotary said:
We’ve won the Jug twice since the last time we won the Axe. And we don’t even play Michigan every year.
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Even 10 years ago, the thought of winning the Axe more than the Jug would have never been a consideration for most of us.
 

march madness said:
Three of the badgers offense lineman are on Phil Steel's all big ten first team, and one on the second. None of these guys were blue chippers coming in. They also have added some really good linebackers on the defensive side of the ball in recent years.

We have a much higher rated recruiting class than they do this year also.

They really develop players.
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We do?

We are recruiting at a higher level than previously, but our top twelve to their top twelve (they only have 12 at this point) is an average rating of .8620 to .8802 for the bad guys.

We may have a higher class ranking right now in the overall "standings" at this point, but that's based on the total number of players we have committed (20) vs. their current class (12).

We'll see where this nets out in February when all is said and done, but the reality is, as you point out, if our classes are close, but not better, there is going to have to be a whole lot of coaching going on in Minneapolis if we're going to get competitive.
 

last years NW and Badger game were reminiscent of those Brew defenses - where you would see the gopher corner look to the sidelines and shrug...as the ball was being snapped. I am afraid the piano teacher might be a lesson behind the student.
 

Pete smith said:
Is there anyone less empressive than Paul Cryst ( maybe TC) talking about his/their program. I found myself actually rooting for him to finish the sentences. Must has have great assistant coaches. If the Grophers aren’t successful, better replace the assistant coaches.
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The only two groups that matter love his demeanor. No nonsense, straight to the point, no extra words. Not flashy by any means, but very sucessful. He has a great staff but he also has coordinated some very good offenses as a Badgers offensive cooordinator. I don't understand all the boring offense stuff. He runs a prostyle offense that a lot of recruits like and that stresses physical dominance over the opponent.

He creates a mindset for the players and they bring that to the field every day. There is no doubt he is the best coach that the Badgers could have at this time.
 


GVBadger said:
The only two groups that matter love his demeanor. No nonsense, straight to the point, no extra words. Not flashy by any means, but very sucessful. He has a great staff but he also has coordinated some very good offenses as a Badgers offensive cooordinator. I don't understand all the boring offense stuff. He runs a prostyle offense that a lot of recruits like and that stresses physical dominance over the opponent.

He creates a mindset for the players and they bring that to the field every day. There is no doubt he is the best coach that the Badgers could have at this time.
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He didn't win a ton of games at Pitt. And I've known Pitt to have produced a number of good RBs over the last several years.

So at least a portion of his (and others...) success at Wisco, unfortunately has to be said that playing in the Big Ten West helps them ...


Pitt now has Narduzzi, who was with Dantonio at Mich St for a long time, but is a defensive guy. Anyway ...
 

Gophers_4life said:
He didn't win a ton of games at Pitt. And I've known Pitt to have produced a number of good RBs over the last several years.

So at least a portion of his (and others...) success at Wisco, unfortunately has to be said that playing in the Big Ten West helps them ...


Pitt now has Narduzzi, who was with Dantonio at Mich St for a long time, but is a defensive guy. Anyway ...
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It's more about the AD in charge. Maybe Iam wrong but Alvarez seems like a big influence. Bielema struck out at Arkansas, Greg Anderson was terrible at Oregon State, Chrystal was pretty meh at PITT. But they all had success in Madison

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk
 

bemidjigopher said:
It's more about the AD in charge. Maybe Iam wrong but Alvarez seems like a big influence. Bielema struck out at Arkansas, Greg Anderson was terrible at Oregon State, Chrystal was pretty meh at PITT. But they all had success in Madison

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk
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Yep. Seems like Alvarez is always slithering around the sidelines. The ultimate puppet master. Once he goes the spell will at long last be broken.
 

Should say, "Gophers, badgers on different planets for 15 seasons and beyond"

Sucks and thank goodness we have hockey with a fresh start.
 



Pompous Elitist said:
Yep. Seems like Alvarez is always slithering around the sidelines. The ultimate puppet master. Once he goes the spell will at long last be broken.
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I’d love to hope so ... but I feel like the protocol of what Alvarez has been engrained into the concrete footings of Camp, by this point. Don’t ever see Wisco saying “enough of this running the ball stuff, let’s throw it 50 times a game!” and hiring a Rich Rodriguez type guy.
 

Gophers_4life said:
I’d love to hope so ... but I feel like the protocol of what Alvarez has been engrained into the concrete footings of Camp, by this point. Don’t ever see Wisco saying “enough of this running the ball stuff, let’s throw it 50 times a game!” and hiring a Rich Rodriguez type guy.
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True, but they did hire Andersen (and IMO Alvarez sent him packing after a few years after philosophical “rifts” developed). Andersen, had he stayed was probably their best shot at failing in the near term.
 


Gophers_4life said:
I’d love to hope so ... but I feel like the protocol of what Alvarez has been engrained into the concrete footings of Camp, by this point. Don’t ever see Wisco saying “enough of this running the ball stuff, let’s throw it 50 times a game!” and hiring a Rich Rodriguez type guy.
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The word I heard when Bielema resigned was that the AD was present at every practice, every staff meeting. BB just got sick of his boss always present. Think about how you would feel if your boss was always standing behind your chair, looking over your shoulder. (Ya, I know if you were being paid several million, you might be able to stomach it). As a side note my wife just reminded me that Bielema hooked on with New England.
 



Pompous Elitist said:
True, but they did hire Andersen (and IMO Alvarez sent him packing after a few years after philosophical “rifts” developed). Andersen, had he stayed was probably their best shot at failing in the near term.
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I guess if you think Gary Andersen lied when he left. He straight up said he left because he couldn't deal with Wisconsin's admissions standards.

Now we know. Admissions was probably the reason the 50-year-old Andersen arguably caused the biggest stir of the coaching silly season.

"That's not Wisconsin's fault," Andersen added. "That's Wisconsin's deal ... I want to surround myself with those kids I can get in school."
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Also:

Andersen stressed that his departure had nothing to do with Alvarez. The two had a good working relationship.

"He never one time stepped on anybody's toes in the football office," the coach said. "Please don't make Wisconsin sound bad in any way, shape or form. I love those kids. I truly love them."
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https://www.cbssports.com/college-f...-standards-pushed-gary-andersen-to-oregon-st/
 


Pete smith said:
The word I heard when Bielema resigned was that the AD was present at every practice, every staff meeting. BB just got sick of his boss always present. Think about how you would feel if your boss was always standing behind your chair, looking over your shoulder. (Ya, I know if you were being paid several million, you might be able to stomach it). As a side note my wife just reminded me that Bielema hooked on with New England.
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Is this a thread where people just make crap up to make themselves feel better? This post is just ridiculous. So is the Gary Anderson post! Its going to be a long season if you are already going to the mattresses.
 

Gary Anderson has proven that if nothing else, he's appears to be a man of his word and a man of principle.
They way he left Oregon St shows that.

So if he says he left because the admission standards caused him to unintentionally mislead a few players with him saying he'd be able to get them in, and he wasn't able to, then I take that as legit.

I don't think he's saying Wisconsin's are far higher than most other places, but maybe that he was given the idea that certain support was there to get borderline guys in, he believed it, he sold it to the recruits, only to end up lying about it which weighed heavily on his conscience.
Some people let that stuff burn in the pits of their stomach when they lie to a kid about their future. Others can justify it and move on. Gary seems like the type where it would burn him for months or years.
 

You can call me a conspiracy nut all you like, won't hurt my feelings one bit. That said:

I don't believe for a single second that what Gary Anderson said is anything close to the truth.


Wisconsin is a HUGE, public university. Admissions people have a quota for how many people they can let in that fall X standard deviations below the mean of the incoming class, as far as test scores, GPA, etc. Reading some of your posts, you'd think we were talking about Harvard.

No no no ... this is Wisconsin we're talking about. They advertise stores that sell beer & cheese on the highway. They very, very easily let in 30 students who are as bright as a box of rocks, if they choose to.


That means that, if Anderson actually did have a problem with admissions, it was because someone higher up (*cough*Alvarez*cough*) pulled some strings/asked for a favor to deny admissions to a player Anderson was recruiting. Could've been for a number of reasons, but I absolutely believe that Alvarez was flat out telling Anderson "look here ... this is still MY program. You will do things my way, or get the F out". And so Anderson got the F out.


-OR- there weren't actually any problems with admissions, and that was just a cover story. I'd be fine with that one too.


That's what I believe.
 


Bigeddysprings said:
Is this a thread where people just make crap up to make themselves feel better? This post is just ridiculous. So is the Gary Anderson post! Its going to be a long season if you are already going to the mattresses.
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Why is it ridiculous to believe two parties made a (publicly) diplomatic parting of ways? Happens all the time. I don’t know why that would be cause for indignation.
 

2018 recruiting according to Phil Steele.
OSU #3
Penn ST #7
Nebraska #16
Michigan #21
Michigan St #28
Maryland #33
Minnesota #38
Iowa #40
Indiana #41
Northwestern #42
Illinois #43
Wisconsin #48.
 

GopherWeatherGuy said:
Complete nonsense but that's nothing new for you.
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Why is this nonsense?

It's OK to support and believe in Fleck (as I do) and still be terribly disappointed with our pathetic non compete game plan in the Wisconsin game last season (as I was).

You PJ fan boys are really something else.
 

Pompous Elitist said:
Why is it ridiculous to believe two parties made a (publicly) diplomatic parting of ways? Happens all the time. I don’t know why that would be cause for indignation.
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No indignation here. The Andersen story has been well documented. I just don't see any point in denying that the standards at Wisconsin are higher than most in the B1G. It's a fact. It is inexplicable to most that Andersen continued to go after Junior college kids that had little chance of being excepted to Wisconsin when he knew the admission standards were in place. Wisconsin was academically too much for several BB recruits as well. So Ryan and Gard and Chryst have all been told that certain recruits did not pass admissions. Andersen was just a strange cat.
 

GophersInIowa said:
It might be the truth, but you have to admit it seems a little odd considering he left to go to a much worse program that, even with the relaxed admission standards, doesn't generally recruit as well as Wisconsin.
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He didn't care about that. Gary Andersen was a juco and he wanted to help other jucos and second-chance kids like him. He told Craig Evans he would get in and then admissions balked on Evans (who went to MSU and then was kicked out after smoking a ton of weed). We actually had a number of issues with admissions with recruits when Gary was coach and I think he became frustrated by it. Under Chryst we haven't heard a peep about the issue.

I mean I think it would be stupid for Andersen to lie about this considering how bad he made himself and Oregon State look when he said it.
 

OK. If Anderson was targeting certain JUCOs that were unlikely to get in at a lot of public schools, fine. That was obviously his own issue.

But I'll just outright tell you, Wisco and every other public school can (and do) admit a number of kids every year that are standard deviations below the mean of the incoming class. They can do it, it isn't impossible.


And Wisconsin has the highest admission standards in the Big Ten? That is false. That would be Michigan. That's the highest ranked academic and research school in the conference, and pretty much one of the gold standards for the nation when it comes to public flagship universities.
 

Zeppelin Gopher said:
Why is this nonsense?

It's OK to support and believe in Fleck (as I do) and still be terribly disappointed with our pathetic non compete game plan in the Wisconsin game last season (as I was).

You PJ fan boys are really something else.
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Because saying they didn't try is complete nonsense. They tried to throw but a WR dropped the ball nearly every time. Croft also took some bad sacks.

I'm supposed to believe they tried to win against Nebraska, then didn't try to win the next two games? Again complete nonsense. They tried to do some of the same things in the last two games that they did against Nebraska. The difference is Nebraska had the worst defense in the league, and we had Tyler Johnson for a good portion of that game.

Take away TJ and play the best defense in Wisconsin, and another really good defense in Northwestern, it's not difficult to understand why the last two games ended up the way they did.

Kill was shutout @Northwestern in 2015 with a far better offense. I'm sure he wasn't trying either..
 

Gophers_4life said:
He didn't win a ton of games at Pitt. And I've known Pitt to have produced a number of good RBs over the last several years.

So at least a portion of his (and others...) success at Wisco, unfortunately has to be said that playing in the Big Ten West helps them ...


Pitt now has Narduzzi, who was with Dantonio at Mich St for a long time, but is a defensive guy. Anyway ...
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The Pitt football community was definitely not happy to lose Chryst (I think they all got it, he'd leave for that job), but they weren't happy to see him go.

I hate saying it because he is a Badger, but he is a good coach.

Putting WI's success at the feet of playing in the Big 10 West - - I guess a portion of it. Up until the last couple of years, Penn State wasn't very good. WI has been better than MI lately. But yeah, I guess not having to be in the same side of the conference as tOSU is going to help anyone.

Wisconsin is just a really good football program now. Like I said, I hate to say it, but they're good.
 

Bigeddysprings said:
Is this a thread where people just make crap up to make themselves feel better? This post is just ridiculous. So is the Gary Anderson post! Its going to be a long season if you are already going to the mattresses.
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going to the mat..
 

The data I’ve seen suggest Wisconsin allows in numerous marginal qualifiers, just like everybody else. They are special population cases and are treated differently. You are conflating average or median test scores and GPA of admitted students vs minimum admissible which is quite low. The NCAA minimum seems acceptable at Wisconsin.

I’ve asked for and never received any data that MN players are any more academically accomplished than Oregon State or NDSU. I think this is a chestbeating or penis size competition. That’s fine, maybe I’m wrong but bring me some data.
 

Pompous Elitist said:
The data I’ve seen suggest Wisconsin allows in numerous marginal qualifiers, just like everybody else. They are special population cases and are treated differently. You are conflating average or median test scores and GPA of admitted students vs minimum admissible which is quite low.
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Yes, exactly.

And I doubt that Wisco’s last X freshman classes’ mean test scores, GPAs, etc. were better than Michigan’s let alone Northwestern’s.
 

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