After 83-20 loss, IU suffers worst Big Ten start since 1996

MADISON, Wis. — The superlatives in Wisconsin’s wallop of IU on Saturday were not hard to find.

The 83 points allowed by the Hoosiers? Only the most IU football has ever given up.

The 63-point losing margin? It ties a 1915 defeat as the worst in IU program history.

The 573 pushups that Wisconsin mascot “Bucky” was charged with completing after Wisconsin’s 13 total scores? Well, the feat reportedly required several different people under the costume.

Oh, the loss also continued IU’s winless start in a waning Big Ten season — the team’s first 0-6 conference start since 1996. The Hoosiers had a new coach following that season.

IU (4-6, 0-6) never once could halt Wisconsin’s offense as the No. 6 Badgers (9-1, 5-1) ripped, thrashed and mauled the helpless Hoosiers, 83-20.

“We got beat every way possible by a good football team,” IU coach Bill Lynch said afterward.

Lynch’s summation still doesn’t seem to describe the drubbing his team endured.

Wisconsin — utilizing the second- and third-team players for much of the second half — piled on touchdown after touchdown on the Camp Randall Stadium scoreboard. The Badgers finished with 11 total touchdowns, the most scored in the Big Ten since 1950.

“We actually weren’t surprised about scoring (83 points),” Wisconsin sophomore running back Montee Ball said. “We practiced very hard, and we were expecting to impose our will upon them.”

To steal Ball’s words, Wisconsin’s efforts tied the best imposition of a team’s will in the Big Ten conference — ever. It was also the most points scored by any team in the Football Bowl Subdivision since Arkansas State dropped 83 in 2008.

And all of it — all of the points, all of the scores — seemed to hinge on one series for IU.

“I’ve never seen a game get away as fast as this one got away after about the six-minute mark of the second quarter,” Lynch said.

The point Lynch referred to saw the Hoosiers trailing the Badgers 17-10 with possession in Wisconsin territory.

IU senior quarterback Ben Chappell — hit hard on the first play of the drive by Wisconsin’s Louis Nzegwu — initially got the call to attempt a six-yard fourth-down conversion at the Wisconsin 33-yard line.

Lynch, however, noticed Chappell in pain and limited in mobility, and he called a timeout. The Hoosiers opted for a field goal from redshirt freshman kicker Mitch Ewald.

Ewald missed the 52-yarder just short of the goal post. On IU’s previous drive, Ewald had connected with room to spare on a 48-yarder.

The IU miss lit a fuse in the Wisconsin offense. After taking over at their own 34-yard line, two rushing plays of 36 and 30 yards, respectively, put the Badgers in the end zone.

The fireworks for the Camp Randall crowd just kept on coming, too. Finally, five touchdowns later and with just 6:30 left in the third quarter, Ewald got the Hoosiers back on the board with another field goal.

“Everybody kind of lost a little fire throughout the game. That’s unacceptable,” IU senior safety Mitchell Evans said. “I think every other game this season, we’ve been fighting at least until the end of the game. I think we shut down a little bit.”

Chappell didn’t return to the game with an unspecified hip injury after being pulled from the fourth-down conversion attempt. Neither he nor the team had any prognosis on the fifth-year senior’s status for the rest of the season.

“It was pretty bad, and I’ve played through a lot,” Chappell said after the game. “I might have been able to play a couple more plays, but it just kept getting worse and worse.”

It was such a beating that most of the 80,477 in attendance hung around in the cold, rainy weather just long enough to take part in the stadium’s tradition of playing “Jump Around” in between the third and fourth quarters. After that, the exits were clogged.

Wisconsin, though, wasn’t finished. The Badgers added 24 more points in the final period while IU added a single touchdown when redshirt freshman quarterback Edward Wright-Baker found a wide-open redshirt freshman wideout Duwyce Wilson for a 62-yard score.

Lynch, who faces an uncertain future with a year remaining in his contract, didn’t accuse the Badgers of running up the score.

“I’ve always felt it was our job to stop them and play the game,” Lynch said. “We didn’t do that very well.”

Lynch’s teams have now dropped 11 consecutive games in Big Ten play and have lost 14 straight conference games on the road. It was the fifth time one of Lynch’s teams have allowed more than 50 points since he took the head coaching duties in 2007.

“From that play on,” Lynch said, referring to the missed field goal in the second quarter, “it really wasn’t a game anymore.”