This Saturday the New Mexico State football team got the opportunity to take a trip to Wisconsin and play the 1-1 Wisconsin Badgers in Camp Randall stadium. Early on against this Big Ten team the Aggies found themselves unable to move the ball resulting in a gruelly 66-7 loss.

The game started off with NMSU kicking to the Badgers which was returned 50 yards to the Aggies’ 49. A  three-play drive all consisting of run plays would end with a Braelon Allen 39 yard run for the first touchdown. Quarterback Diego Pavia would start the game for the Aggies continuing the rotation between him and freshman quarterback Gavin Frakes who started last week.

The first drive for NM State would be a six-play drive consisting of two pass plays, and three run plays including one from Diego Pavia who lost three yards. The Aggies’ drive was able to be extended with a 15-yard penalty on third down. The Badgers then got the ball and were forced to punt after a 7 play drive where nothing really stood out.

NMSU and Pavia would get the ball at their own 20 on the next drive. On first and 10 NM State would hand off to Star Thomas for a run of three yards. On second down Pavia would throw his 4^th interception of the season.

The game progressed with punts back to each other for two drives before Wisconsin would get the ball with 13:59 remaining in the second quarter in which NMSU picked up a personal foul to push the Badgers to the Aggies 34 yard line. Junior quarterback Graham Mertz would complete a 13-yard pass to Jackson Acker for 13 yards and would finish the drive with an 18-yard touchdown pass to Keontez Lewis.

After four unsuccessful drives, Coach Kill would bring in Gavin Frakes to try and spark the offense but the quarterback switch-up proved just as lethal as he threw two incompletions, had a delay of game on third down, and then threw an interception.

The Badgers continued to dominate scoring on 2 straight drives before the half ended and would rattle off four more touchdowns before the game would end. The only noteworthy offensive play came late in the game when NM State eventually found the endzone with 8:10 left in the fourth with an Ahmonte Watkins touchdown run from one yard out.

“Good thing is we got eight games left and we have played the teams, UTEP being one and Nevada being one and we had chances to win those games and we physically when we played the two big 10 teams just got beat up physically,” Kill said. He continued, “Their quarterback really played well, I was impressed with him. That’s kind of where we are at we still got a lot of football to play, but we need to get it figured out the best we can with the people we got and it’s just hard to turn around a program it’s not the first time I’ve been through this.”

The Aggies will continue to try and find their niche and collect their first win of the Coach Kill era despite the 66-7 loss as they are scheduled to play at home next week versus Hawaii on Sept. 24^th at 6:00 p.m.