Lol, it never occurred to me that the Mich-Wiscy result could be considered a fluke. That was such a dominant performance by Wisconsin, leading I think 38-0 in the 3Q.
Time will tell, I guess. Right now I am confident that Wisconsin is much better than Michigan. Which is why the ILL-Wisc game makes my head spin.
I think so too. Yeah, that was a bad [and head-scratching] loss to Illinois.
But every team has those from time to time, like Ohio State getting absolutely clobbered by Purdue last year. OSU was still the best team in the conference by far last year IMHO, and Purdue was nowhere close. But, one team gets hot, gets some turnovers and/or big plays, and boom, you have 49-20. In that game last year it was largely that Ohio State kept getting into the red zone and coming up empty. They moved the ball without a problem between the 20s, but stalled out when it came to putting points on the scoreboard.
Wisconsin had more 1st downs than Illinois, and had a MUCH better 3rd down conversion rate. Had over 100 more total yards. Dominated time of possession, holding the ball for over 40 minutes. Wisconsin had a 75% completion rate (24 of 32), while Illinois was 9-21 (43%) passing the ball. That's... not great.
But Wisconsin was also -2 in the turnover margin, and had too many drives end in FG (or missed FG in one case). They had 60 penalty yards to only 15 for Illinois.
Let a team that "shouldn't have a chance" hang around into the 4th quarter, and crazy things happen. This was just one of those weeks.