Wisconsin beats Minnesota yet again, setting up a Playoff shot in the Big Ten Championship

No. 6 Wisconsin overcame a strong challenge from Minnesota on Saturday to win Paul Bunyan’s Axe and get better postseason positioning. The Badgers had already locked a spot in next Saturday’s Big Ten Championship Game (8 p.m. ET, FOX).

The final score was 31-17, and Wisconsin’s Axe win was its 13th in a row, knotting the schools’ all-time series at a tidy 59-59-8. The Gophers had a 17-7 halftime lead, but Wisconsin pushed back in the second half and took over in the fourth quarter. It finished a brilliant season for Paul Chryst’s team, which is 10-2 and 7-2 in the Big Ten.

The game had no consequences for the Big Ten West standings. Wisconsin clinched the division on Friday, when Iowa beat Nebraska and guaranteed the Badgers, at least, a divisional title via a tiebreaker. They’ve now won the division outright by conference record, only losing to the East Division’s Michigan and Ohio State.

The Big Ten title game won’t be a rematch, though. The Badgers will play Penn State, about to wrap the East by beating Michigan State. The Nittany Lions benefited from Ohio State’s win over Michigan, which knocked out the Wolverines and let Penn State take the division on a head-to-head tiebreaker. The game presents a defensive advantage for Wisconsin, while PSU has the clearly superior offense.

Because Wisconsin won, there’s a pretty good chance next Saturday’s title bout is a play-in game to reach the College Football Playoff. That’s not definite, because both the Badgers and Lions have two losses on the year. (Ohio State is the lone Big Ten team with just one, and, ironically, will not get a shot at the conference title.) It’s possible that a two-loss Big Ten champion doesn’t get into the top four, but it’s a lot less likely than if the league had a winner with three Ls on the resume.