Wisconsin Coach Bret Bielema leaves few doubts about his progress with Badgers

Bret Bielema said he was not trying to make a point.

Or, for that matter, more than 70 of them.

Why then, did Wisconsin feel compelled to score 83 points against Indiana in mid-November? And was it really necessary to hang 70 on Northwestern in the regular-season finale?

Bielema, Wisconsin’s fifth-year coach, deflects suggestions that the Badgers went bonkers with touchdowns in an attempt to influence the poll voters and computers that determine the Bowl Championship Series standings.

But it was the BCS standings that broke a Big Ten Conference tiebreaker between Wisconsin, Ohio State and Michigan State and sent the Badgers to the Rose Bowl.

“It’s easy to say because it happened,” Bielema said, “but if you really watch the games, you realize that there [weren’t] any additional points put on the board.”

Bielema points to touchdowns scored on interception returns and running backs who broke tackles and did what they are trained to do: reach the end zone.

Critics who saw the Badgers score on a 74-yard pass midway through the fourth quarter against Indiana might disagree. So, probably, would former Minnesota coach Tim Brewster. He criticized Bielema for what he viewed as an attempt to run up the score when the Badgers tried a two-point conversion in the fourth quarter of a 41-23 victory in October.

Only one point really matters to Bielema: Wisconsin is back in the Rose Bowl for the first time since winning it in 1999 and 2000.

Asked if the matchup against No. 3-ranked Texas Christian (12-0) should be regarded as a measuring stick for him and his program, Bielema did not hesitate.

“Without a doubt,” he said.

There were some who doubted Barry Alvarez when he hand-picked Bielema, then 35, as his successor after the 2005 season.

But Bielema, who had been Wisconsin’s defensive coordinator for two seasons, has guided the Badgers to a bowl game in each of his five seasons, topped by the return to a game the Badgers won three times under Alvarez.

“I don’t know how you could expect any more,” Alvarez, Wisconsin’s athletic director since 2004, said after watching a practice this week.

Bielema, 40, is a product of the same coaching tree that spawned Alvarez.

Bielema grew up on a hog farm in Illinois and made Iowa’s football team as a walk-on. Former Hawkeyes coach Hayden Fry eventually awarded him a scholarship, and Bielema played for the Big Ten championship team that lost to Washington in the 1991 Rose Bowl.

After he was cut by the Seattle Seahawks in 1993, Bielema contemplated a career in finance. Fry persuaded him to try coaching.

“He said, ‘What do you want to go into that for? You don’t want to wear a tie every day.’ ” Bielema said.

Bielema joined Iowa’s staff as a graduate assistant and coached under Fry and then Kirk Ferentz in Iowa City for nine seasons. Bielema was co-defensive coordinator at Kansas State in 2002 and 2003 before Alvarez, a former assistant under Fry, brought him to Madison.

Three years later, Bielema went 12-1 in his first season as a head coach.

Not that it has always been a smooth ride for Bielema, a bachelor who bears a Hawkeyes tattoo on his left leg.

The Badgers finished 9-4 in 2007, and some fans were calling for Bielema’s dismissal in the midst of a 7-6 season in 2008.

The turning point for the program, players say, came during a 2008 game against Michigan State when Bielema was called for a 15-yard penalty for arguing with officials. The penalty kept a Michigan State drive alive and led to a Wisconsin defeat.

“He put the blame on himself right after that” game, senior linebacker Blake Sorensen said. “He looked at himself after the season and said he needed to change. And he put a lot on us as well.

“We really changed the way we work and it’s led to this.”

Building on a 10-3 season in 2009 that ended with a victory over Miami in the Champs Sports Bowl, Wisconsin won its first four games — including a 70-3 victory over Austin Peay — before losing its Big Ten opener at Michigan State. The Badgers haven’t lost since, winning seven games in a row and amassing 201 points and 1,715 yards in their last three against Indiana, Michigan and Northwestern.

Though Alvarez said he shares a “father-son relationship” with Bielema and regularly offers opinions and recommendations, he said he does not tell the coach what to do.

Alvarez also said he did not think that Bielema ran up scores, though he couldn’t help grinning when adding, “I never put 80 on anyone.”

Bielema, Alvarez and the rest of Badger Nation do not care how many points Wisconsin scores on Saturday, just as long as it’s more than TCU.

“This journey has been a nice ride,” Bielema said, “but the end is what you’re going to remember.”

gary.klein@latimes.com

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