1-0, Evaluation

Wisconsin 38, Akron 17

Season football tickets: $143. Lemonade/water bottle: $3.50. Watching Bucky tackle a model of the new Ogg: priceless

I love football Saturdays. The neighborhood I am living in is completely packed with people on gameday, and everyone has only one thing in mind: destroying whatever team is foolish enough to wander into Camp Randall Stadium. Plus, a bunch of my friends who have tickets live right around me, so we can get together before and after the game.

As for the game itself, here are my grades for the team:

Rushing Offense: A
I don't care if we we're playing Akron or Georgia, this game showed everyone that our running game is gonna be tough to stop. P.J. Hill racked up 200+ yards before anybody realized he was even close, and both of our backups nearly rattled off 100 yard games as well. 3rd down conversions were handled effectively, and the ground game put together some impressive long drives, complete with plenty of big plays. The turnovers were disconcerting, but that will certainly improve over the season. The offensive line looked solid, creating holes and getting good blocks downfield.

Passing Offense: B
Overall, I was fairly pleased with Allen Evridge. He made some questionable decisions, but backed them up with well placed throws for the most part. The interception was certainly unfortunate, but it was just a simple case of throwing inside his receiver in end-zone coverage, and you can be sure he will get a talking-to for it. Overall, Evridge was efficient, but we'll see how he does in a game where we actually need to throw. It was difficult to judge the performance of our receivers in this game, as most of our passing plays came on wide open routes. However, there were some highlight-reel catches by Garrett Graham and Kyle Jefferson.

Rushing Defense: AB
The Zips were held to 70 yards rushing the entire game, and none of those came on long explosive runs. The defensive line refused to give the entire game, and missed tackles were generally minimal. It is a little scary when you see Safeties having to step up into the box and make rushing tackles, but at least they're making the tackles. The defense seemed to have trouble handling rushers trying to turn the corner, which is something that definitely needs to be brushed up on. You can't focus solely on stopping runs up the middle when so many teams have backs fast enough to run around your line.

Passing Defense: C
Wisconsin is lucky that Akron's passing offense was running like a 3-legged spider in space, because coverage was lax across the board. Receivers were often wide open in single coverage, with big gains or scores failing to materialize only because of off-target throws and dropped catches. Luckily, most of Akron's receivers were wrapped up quickly after the catch, but coverage will have to be tighter when we face a quarterback who can put the ball in a receiver's hands anywhere on the field. The pass rush was certainly better than the secondary, with a respectable number of sacks and generally decent pressure throughout the game, especially in the second half. There are lots of times where I would like to see more aggressive pass rush play-calling from the Badgers, but good coverage is a prerequisite for that.

Special Teams: B
Special Teams were all over the board today. While Gilreath did have a couple of very impressive returns and was overall pretty strong, he made a few poor decisions that could have been disasterous. More important, though, is that he was required to make those decisions at all. Blocking on returns was not very good. Gilreath was constantly pressured while making the catch. Kicking was pretty satisfactory, especially the flawless placekicking. Punts and kickoffs were generally good, with only a few mistakes, most notably a very poor kickoff which was likely caused by the holder who was out because of the wind. Field position being as important as it is, it's important not to give up easy ground like that.

Overall Grade: AB
Hey, we did win 38-17, didn't we? Regardless of the problems that showed up, the Badgers clearly showed that they are a formidible team. Now let's just hope they continue it against a team that somebody knows.

The Sink Has Landed

I'm in, along with Jeff, Andy, and Nate. I'm sleeping on a mattress on the floor because I don't have a bed frame yet, but I'm in. And it is glorious. We have so much silverware and so much tupperware. Nothing wrong with that though, I suppose. I'm pumped for this year. Gotta go pick up my football ticket voucher tomorrow, as well as change my Associated Bank address once again. Other than that, this week is pretty much the most summer vacation I've had all year. I'll have to get books and stuff, but I've actually got most of that stuff already. Mostly I'll just enjoy apartment life before the hectic year begins. Peace.

Almost there...

Only 2 more days of work left, and even those are just short mornings. Then it's back to Madison and my apartment which still has no beds. Awesome. If JSM doesn't take care of that soon, I'm gonna raise hell, and better get some damn money out of it.

I'm fairly pleased with the new Rilo Kiley CD. Most of their past albums have been very "take it or leave it" for me. After one listen, I'm liking this new one a little more.

RIP LeRoi Moore

LeRoi Moore, saxophonist and founding member of the Dave Matthews Band, died Tuesday afternoon. This guy was a phenomenal musician, flat out. He will be missed by many, many fans.

The Fishin' Magician, As Well As Continued Weekend Elaborations

I have been up for 19 hours. Why? Because charter fishing on Lake Michigan is solid as fuck. I woke up at quarter after 2 in the morning, got out on the lake by quarter after four, and had landed a 10 or 12 pound King Salmon by 4:45. That is how you start a morning out right. The fishing continued pretty good for about 3 hours more, before it pretty much died at around 8:30. It was a really fun trip, especially since we ended up with 10 fish, one of which was a very nice 12-14 pounder, landed by my 12 year old cousin.

We finally figured out what kind of cable/internet service we want, and have a vague idea of who is going to bring what to the apartment, so I guess we're making progress. Now we just have to take care of the 6 (at least) things that are going to require maintenance requests.

Move-In Weekend, In a Nutshell

It was really dirty. Then they vacuumed, so it wasn't quite as dirty. We cleaned some stuff. It takes 2 minutes to reach B-Rent's place. I'm really tired. More to follow.

Preposterous Amounts of Illegality

Right now I am downloading no less than 5 different albums, the majority by an excellent hip-hop duo I have only recently been introduced to: Atmosphere.

I was happy to see that Dark Knight smashed the record for least time to reach 400 million dollars in box office earnings. Hopefully this is a sign that Titanic's record 600 million in sales is about to fall, because I feel that the Dark Knight is a superior movie in most every sense. Titanic is fantastic as well, but as I see it, Dark Knight is almost more impressive for being fictional while maintaining a very real sense of urgency, one that could only be rivaled by being trapped on a sinking ocean liner in the Atlantic Ocean. The fact that The Dark Knight has already made so much also says something else about its earning power, because Titanic's earnings were inflated by all the boyfriends who were dragged out to see it. I have a strong feeling that it is easier for girls to drag guys to movies than vice versa. After all, movie theaters aren't good solely for seeing movies. And of course, there was that one scene that probably enticed more than a few lonely guys to buy a ticket...or twelve.

I've got a lot of stuff to do to get ready for move-in day in Madison. Hopefully it all comes together soon. I'm hella' pumped to go back down. I've had enough of summer jobs and early mornings. I'm ready for college, round 2.