Barry Alvarez hated playing at Northwestern

Wisconsin is the 7-point favorite to play on the road and beat Northwestern on Saturday, but former Badgers head coach and athletics director Barry Alvarez warns that facing the Wildcats can be a challenging experience to play on their lawn.

It could be even more difficult now that Northwestern has torn down its longtime home, Ryan Field, and is playing in a makeshift stadium on the shores of Lake Michigan in Evanston. We don’t know what the locker rooms look like at the temporary stadium, but they probably can’t be worse than what Alvarez remembers at Ryan Field.

“It was bad enough when they thought it was good,” Alvarez said Monday on ESPN Madison The Great Dane. “That was a tough place to play. The locker room is worse than a high school locker room. I hated going down there. It was a downer. It was a bummer. And they’re always a good team and they’re coached well and you walk into your old high school locker room. It’s like taking a step back. We didn’t play well down there.”

Wisconsin (4-2) has two wins over Purdue and Rutgers, outscoring their Big Ten opponents 94-13. Northwestern (3-3) won the turnover battle 4-0 and defeated Maryland 37-10 on Saturday despite dominating in nearly every other area of ​​the game.

Alvarez loved the way Wisconsin played in the blowout win at Rutgers.

“It was as complete a game as we’ve had in a long time,” said Alvarez. “Complete victory, all phases of the game played particularly well. Hard to do.”

Are the Badgers back?

“I don’t think you say after a game that they’re back. You have to see consistency. Come back this week and let’s do the same thing this week at Northwestern, where it’s been difficult for us to play for a long time. “I’ve been there,” Alvarez said.