via www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com

A lot of people are going to try to downplay Ohio State's duel with Wisconsin on October 10th. It's going to come in the midst of a five-game stretch between Illinois and Penn State that features such stalwarts as New Mexico State, Purdue, and Minnesota, who's got this new stadium comin'. It will probably be a ho-hum stretch. Wisconsin will, without question, be the best team Ohio State plays in this stretch. I've got a feeling it'll be a close one:

Outside of the 38-17 Beanie Wells-fueled romp, games against Wisconsin have historically been very close under Jim Tressel. It's the only Big Ten team he doesn't have a winning record against, and if Barry Alvarez was still their head coach, it might be the only he'd have a losing record against. It's a bit of a cop-out to say that Wisconsin has lost the physicality it once had under Alvarez in the transition to the Bielema regime, at least on the offensive side of the ball: Wisconsin has been a top-40 rushing offense for four years running. Where things have seemingly taken a hit is on the defensive side of the ball; Wisconsin still churns out exceptional athletes like Jonathan Casillas and DeAndre Levy, but they simply aren't coming through in bigger games, especially last year's 48-7 home debacle against Penn State. So what can we expect from the Badgers this year in the 'Shoe?

Badgers you should care about:

John Clay. Without a doubt, John Clay. A redshirt freshman last year, Clay toted the rock a total of 10 times last year against the Buckeyes, gaining 69 yards on those carries. Here's a video of him waving the UW flag after their game against Minnesota, since I couldn't find any good highlights of his game against Ohio State:

After his game against Ohio State, I began to come to the epinion that John Clay was actually better than starter PJ Hill; he averaged 5.7 yards a carry to Hill's 5.2, scored 9 times on 155 carries to Hill's 13 on 226 (a statistical draw of a touchdown ever 17 carries or so) and he didn't show any signs of having the recurrent injury problems of his superior. So, for now, place me firmly on the John Clay bandwagon; I think he's going to be very good, and I think he's going to give Ohio State's defense trouble again. David Gilreath is another player I'm watching. Arguably the fast player on the Wisconsin team, Wisconsin gets Gilreath the ball in a variety of ways; he carried the ball 25 times last year for 285 times to go with 31 receptions for 520 yards and five total scores. The Badgers won't be a team who'll challenge you vertically very often at all, but when they do, they're probably going to try it with Gilreath. Defensively, Wisconsin loses a lot of manpower, but junior safety Jay Valai - who knocked Herron out of the '08 game - returns. Hopefully he'll be just as willing and able to cede game-winning touchdowns again this year:

Interesting / Relevant Statistics and facts: (numbers garnered from College Football Stats and the NCAA Statistics Website)

- Wisconsin rushed for more than 100 yards against every single team it played last year, but averaged fewer than 4 YPC against Marshall, Fresno State, Michigan, Illinois, Penn State and Minnesota - nearly half the teams on their schedule.

- Holy crap Wisconsin's passing offense is bad. It went over 300 yards against one team - Marshall - and went over 200 only four times on the season, once against Cal Poly. I don't know why it took me this long to realize this.

- Wisconsin's defense hasn't half bad last year against the run, finishing 44th in the country. Why it seemed worse becomes a little more obvious when you look at how the defense did against the better (or at least, more-talented) teams on their schedule: Wisconsin surrendered 172 yards to Michigan, 183 to Ohio State,  254 to Iowa and 276 (!!!) yards to...

Cal Poly! Who is neither more talented nor better than Wisconsin, so let's call that one hell of an outlier.

- The passing defense was also ranked 44th, but gave up 200+ yard days to Michigan State, Penn State, Illinois, Minnesota, Fresno State, Marshall and Akron. Akron, people!

- The Badgers lose half of their top ten tackle leaders to graduation and the draft; but leading tackler Jaevery McFadden is back for his senior season. They also lose 16 of their 23 sacks in 2008, but one guy who tied for the lead in sacks - O'Brien Schofield, who I'd never heard of prior to writing this piece, is also a returning senior in 2009.

Early Prediction:

That, my friends, is Wisconsin's "schedule" up to their date with Ohio State. Simply: LOL. The only game the Badgers shouldn't win handily is Michigan State, and even then, no one's minds would be blown by a Badger victory over Sparty. That looks like a 5-0 start to me, meaning this game will receive an undeserving amount of hype. Ohio State will come out of the gates swinging, getting an early 14-0 lead. Wisconsin will slow things down immediately by introducing a little more John Clay into its gameplan, netting a rushing touchdown at some point in the first half. Then, the scoring will cease as both teams essentially attempt to out-cromag each other. In the end, Ohio State will walk away with a 27-17 win mostly because I can't fathom a Jim Tressel loss to Coach Meathead and partly because Wisconsin has Dustin Sherer, Scott Tolzien, and a bag of twizzlers as its options under center.

If we win: Pop a few wine coolers to celebrate Tressel's winning record against every single Big Ten team.

If we lose: I'll to go to my room and flagellate, because it'll be less painful than losing to a Coach Meathead team.