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Wisconsin was backed up astatine its 3-yard line, the Badgers successful endurance mode aft a accelerated start.
They had done small aft taking an aboriginal lead, and losing choky extremity Jake Ferguson to an wounded aboriginal successful the 2nd fractional did thing to assistance the situation.
But erstwhile the Badgers had to enactment unneurotic the game’s cardinal thrust Thursday night, they came through. Wisconsin drove astir the magnitude of the field, sapping the last 9:57 disconnected the timepiece to guarantee a 20-13 triumph implicit Arizona State and the Las Vegas Bowl rubric astatine Allegiant Stadium.
The Badgers converted 2 3rd downs connected the 18-play, 90-yard drive, including a third-and-12 aboriginal successful the bid erstwhile Graham Mertz completed a 30-yard walk to Chimere Dike. The Sun Devils handed Wisconsin different conversion erstwhile antiaircraft tackle Omarr Norman-Lott jumped offsides.
“The 2nd half, we struggled offensively, but guys kept uncovering ways to travel up and springiness america a chance,” Wisconsin manager Paul Chryst said. “It was a heck of a thrust to decorativeness it off.”
An announced assemblage of 32,515 watched the game, overmuch little than vessel officials hoped for aboriginal this period when they expected person to a sellout. Even the time earlier the game, vessel enforcement manager John Saccenti hoped to interruption the vessel attendance record of 44,615 acceptable successful 2006 for the Brigham Young-Oregon game.
This crippled alternatively was the lowest-attended Las Vegas Bowl since 29,286 showed up successful 2016 for San Diego State-Houston. The lowest earlier that was successful 2004 erstwhile 27,784 attended the Wyoming-UCLA game.
The existent COVID-19 surge impacted summons income and dissuaded fans of some teams from traveling. High edifice country rates the nighttime earlier New Year’s Eve besides figured to beryllium a factor.
This was the archetypal clip the crippled was played astatine Allegiant aft having moved from Sam Boyd Stadium pursuing the 2019 season. Last year’s crippled was not played due to the fact that of COVID-19 issues.
Wisconsin (9-4) dominated aboriginal successful taking a 14-3 pb and appeared successful control. The Badgers didn’t support the momentum, though.
Arizona State (8-5) chopped Wisconsin’s pb to 20-13 aboriginal successful the 3rd 4th connected Daniyel Ngata’s 3-yard touchdown run, but the Sun Devils’ adjacent 2 drives stalled astir midfield.
Then came that last Wisconsin clock-eating drive.
“I kept looking up astatine that clock, spot me,” Arizona State manager Herm Edwards said. “Every clip they made a archetypal down, I kept looking astatine the clock. I said, ‘We’re moving retired of time.’
“Toward the end, we were really going to fto them score, but they knew we were astir apt going to effort and fto them score, and they … prevented america from doing that. They did the close happening and took the knee.”
Game MVP Braelon Allen rushed 29 times for 159 yards, and helium came up peculiarly large connected that past drive, rushing for 45 yards connected 10 attempts.
His show capped a play successful which Allen rushed for 1,268 yards, conscionable the 4th Wisconsin freshman to summation much than 1,000 yards. It’s a database that includes Ron Dayne (1996), James White (2010) and Jonathan Taylor (2017).
Allen was a large crushed the Badgers played successful Las Vegas and past a cardinal crushed they won successful Las Vegas. As acold arsenic partying successful Las Vegas, this week wasn’t astir that.
“Pretty uneventful being underage successful Vegas,” Allen said. “Hopefully, the adjacent clip I travel back, I’ll beryllium of property and get to bash immoderate things.”
Contact newsman Mark Anderson astatine manderson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @markanderson65 connected Twitter.
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