Badgers gain players and lose players from injury list

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MADISON - The University of Wisconsin football team is expected to be without right guard Kyle Costigan when the Badgers host Illinois tomorrow.

The redshirt sophomore from Muskego did not practice all week, after he injured his right knee in last Saturday night’s loss at Nebraska. Costigan was hurt midway through the first quarter – but he finished the game after missing just one play. Redshirt junior Zac Matthias will start in Costigan’s place. Matthias started the Badgers’ first three games before losing his spot to Costigan.

Also, head coach Bret Bielema says defensive ends Pat Muldoon and Brendan Kelly will return for tomorrow’s game. Muldoon has missed three games after injuring a thumb. Kelly missed three-of-the-last-four contests with a bad hamstring. Bielema also said senior safety Shelton Johnson could play. He broke his right arm against Oregon State on September eighth, and he’s been given a clean bill of health. Johnson was expected to be out for up to eight weeks. But if he doesn’t return tomorrow, Johnson says he’ll definitely be back the following week. Both Wisconsin and Illinois are 0-1 in Big Ten play going into tomorrow’s contest at Camp Randall. The Badgers are 3-2 overall, while the Illini are 2-3.

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Badgers’ coach Bret Bielema was so focused on his preparations for the Illinois game, that he didn’t know President Obama was on campus yesterday. The president spoke to 30,000 supporters outside Bascom Hall in the center of the Madison campus. And Obama met privately for five minutes with the UW men’s basketball team, after forward Zach Bohannon tried to convince the president to play a pick-up game with the Badgers during his visit. The subject came up when a reporter asked Bielema, “You didn’t get any love from the president today like the basketball team?” That rendered the normally talkative Bielema speechless – and he eventually admitted he had no idea what was going on. A reporter finally told him quote, “Obama was here.”

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The University of Nebraska is investigating the sales of fake tickets to last Saturday night’s Cornhusker victory over Wisconsin. According to the Lincoln Journal Star, at least 16 counterfeit tickets have been turned into Nebraska’s athletic ticket office. Assistant campus police chief Charlotte Evans said the victims bought their tickets online for $200 each on Craigslist. Most buyers said they picked up the tickets last Saturday from a man in Lincoln – only to find out at the gate that they were no good. Similar schemes have been reported at other schools, but Evans says it’s new to Nebraska.

Tags: wisconsin sports, proam, football, badgers