Wisconsin Beats Oregon State with Ease

The Wisconsin Badgers made it look easy while beating the Oregon State Beavers on Saturday. The No. 8 team in the country made the Big Ten Conference look pretty good this weekend, handling one of the Pac-12's lower tier teams in one of the most one-sided games of the day.

The Badgers won with a very balanced attack, controlling every aspect of the game. The first half consisted of three passing touchdowns for quarterback Russell Wilson, who then turned the ball over to Montee Ball, who scored two rushing touchdowns in the second half. The methodical way that the Wisconsin offense took apart the Beavers was pretty hard to take for fans at Oregon State, but this was simply a game where one team severely out-matched the other one.

Wisconsin moved to 2-0, adding another blowout victory to what the team accomplished against UNLV last week. Next up will be the Northern Illinois Huskies and then South Dakota, making it seem quite clear Wisconsin is going to enter Big Ten conference play with a 4-0 record. That's probably going to be really needed because three of the first four conference games are against Nebraska, Michigan State and Ohio State.

On the season, that is now five rushing touchdowns for Ball in two games, which go along nicely with the five passing touchdowns for Wilson. That's pretty good balance on offense, and it was certainly aided by the shut-down defense that the Badgers showcased. That's something that the rest of the Big Ten might need to be worried about, especially with a Pac-12 opponent scoring zero points in this one.

The 35-0 win will keep Wisconsin in the top ten for both polls, but it's hard to think that this is going to give the team a bump in the rankings. It would probably take someone in the top eight getting upset on Saturday, because Oregon State just lost a bunch of respect as an opponent this year. Now Badgers fans have got to hope that the Beavers upset a team like Stanford or the Oregon Ducks later on this season, because this is starting to feel like a game that won't be deemed as a quality win when November rolls around.

For now though, Wisconsin is on a very nice win streak to start out the year, and doing it in front of the home crowd will certainly build momentum (and sell tickets) for the rest of the college football season.