Athan Kaliakmanis comes alive as Gophers beat Badgers in Wisconsin
The Gophers took the reins off Athan Kaliakmanis and the redshirt freshman lit up the Badgers by throwing for 319 yards including the game-winning 45-yard touchdown late in the fourth quarter as the Minnesota Gophers won in Wisconsin 23-16 in the regular season finale.
Kaliakmanis finished 19-of-29 for 319 yards and two touchdowns. The 45-yard game-winner was on a slant to Le'Meke Brockington, who split the defense and raced into the end zone to silence the crowd in Madison.
The Gophers want that Axe. 🪓@LemekeBrocking1 x @GopherFootball pic.twitter.com/DD7z8zqsai
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) November 26, 2022
The 300-yard effort snapped a streak of 34 consecutive games without a Gophers quarterback throwing for 300 yards. The last time it happened was Nov. 16, 2019 when Tanner Morgan threw for 368 yards in a loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes.
Kaliakmanis had thrown for 87 and 64 yards, respectively, in his previous two games.
After the go-ahead score by Brockington, Minnesota's Justin Walley intercepted Graham Mertz and trimmed the clock to under two minutes before Matthew Trickett's 48-yard field goal banged off the upright, keeping it a one-score game with 1:48 to play.
Wisconsin drove to the Minnesota 20-yard line with 32 seconds to go and drew a pass interference call in the end zone, giving them the ball at the 5-yard line with 26 seconds left. But then the Badgers melted down a holding penalty and three false starts, making it 2nd-and-goal from the 30.
A short completion got them to the 25 with 5 seconds left and the game ended on an incomplete pass into the end zone.
Kaliakmanis completed his 19 passes to four different receivers:
- Brevyn Spann-Ford: 7 catches, 95 yards
- Daniel Jackson: 5 catches, 86 yards, 1 touchdown
- Dylan Wright: 5 catches, 86 yards
- Le'Meke Brockington: 2 catches, 52 yards, 1 touchdown
Note: Mohamed Ibrahim's streak of 19 consecutive games with 100+ yards ended. He finished the day with 70 yards on 27 carries.
Minnesota finishes the regular season 8-4 and now awaits their bowl game fate.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.