Wisconsin tailback Brian Calhoun didn’t know Northwestern quarterback Brett Basanez until Saturday. They never had met.
But while his teammates dragged their bruised egos back to the locker room after their grueling 51-48 loss at Ryan Field, Calhoun made a point to find Basanez, shake his hand and offer his props.
“I told him they have a great team,” Calhoun said, “and to keep doing what they’re doing.”
Another massive sign of respect came when Calhoun was asked how a team could score as many points as the Badgers did and still lose.
“When you play a team like Northwestern,” he replied, “48 might not be enough.”
Not on this day. Not against a Northwestern team that produced a school-record 674 yards of total offense and reeled off six touchdowns on its first six drives after the intermission.
Think about that. The Wildcats scored one touchdown in five first-half possessions. Then they were unstoppable against an undefeated and 14th-ranked team that had not allowed a single third-quarter point all season.
“When the line was getting pressure, we weren’t covering,” cornerback Brett Bell said. “When we were covering, the line wasn’t getting pressure.”
Coach Barry Alvarez didn’t see the need to pinpoint the biggest culprit.
“When you give up that many points . . . none of them played well,” he said.
“You can talk about pressure, you can talk about coverage, you can talk about tackling.”
And you better talk about Tyrell Sutton, who torched the Badgers with second-half touchdown runs of 1, 14 and 62 yards. He ran through countless arm tackles on his way to a 244-yard performance, NU’s sixth-highest all-time tally.
“That kid moved the pile,” Alvarez said. “They hand it off and it looks like you stop them and they get 4 yards.”
Said Bell: “He has no give-up. I give that kid a lot of credit.”
This isn’t like Ozzie Guillen calling Frank Thomas a kid. Sutton, a freshman, won’t turn 19 until December.
“He’s the toughest back we’ve faced so far,” linebacker Dontez Sanders said. “He’s a big guy.”
Actually he’s listed at 5 feet 9 inches and 190 pounds.
“He doesn’t look that small,” Sanders said.
Even when he was a lot smaller than he is now, Sutton refused to go down without a fight. He learned that trait from his brother, Tony, who excelled at Division III College of Wooster in Ohio.
“I don’t like being tackled by the first guy,” Sutton said. “That has been instilled in me since I was about 8 years old watching my brother play.”
Sutton’s productivity gives NU the kind of balance a coach dreams about. The Wildcats passed for 361 yards Saturday and ran for 313.
So don’t try telling coach Randy Walker his team will get bloodied during a five-game stretch against a murderer’s row of Big Ten opponents: Purdue, Michigan State, Michigan, Iowa and Ohio State.
Walker isn’t buying it.
“The Big Ten is as balanced a league as there is in the country,” he said. “After [Saturday night], there will be one undefeated team in the Big Ten, and that makes us just one game out.”
With both Wisconsin and Ohio State having lost Saturday, only Penn State remains flawless in league play. That also gives the Badgers hope their dreams of a Big Ten title did not die on a cool, dreary day in Evanston.
“You never want to lose,” receiver Brandon Williams said. “But you take the loss for what it is. We’re 2-1 in the conference and we’ve still got six games left. That’s the first thing I said when I went in the locker room. [The Big Ten race] isn’t over by any means.”
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tgreenstein@tribune.com
