WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – It didn't get any easier for Ron Turner's idle Illini Saturday.

Homecoming foe Purdue, as big a positive surprise as Texas has been a disappointment, dropped a big-play blitzkrieg on unsuspecting Wisconsin Saturday and coasted in 45-20.

The shocking runaway snapped the Badgers' six-game win streak and gave the Boilermakers a five-game skein to carry into Memorial Stadium next weekend.

Ever since the second game, when Adrian Beasley picked up a third-quarter Notre Dame fumble and rambled 43 yards to help bury the Irish 28-17, Purdue has replaced Northwestern as the Big Ten's "team of destiny."

In fact, the Boilermakers squelched NU 21-9, with quarterback Billy Dicken on the receiving end of a 20-yard throwback that set up the key TD.

That's the new look. You never know what first-year coach Joe Tiller is going to come up with next. This is an unpredictable guy who took his team bowling after the spring session but has lost 16 squad members who didn't meet academic or other standards.

The balding veteran led Wyoming to 10-2 last season with the nation's most prolific aerial game (359 yards a game), and most of his staff hooked on as he returned to Purdue.

Yes, the Western Athletic Conference style will work in the Big Ten. Tiller lines his athletes across the field, sometimes going without a set back, sometimes in a T and sometimes in a shotgun. Their criss-cross patterns left Wisconsin's secondary dizzy Saturday.

Early strikes

This contest was settled in the first 10 minutes.

Bloomington's Dicken, whose history shows rotator cuff surgery and a fractured sternum, demonstrated his arm is fine with a 40-yard bomb on the second play. Then he ran 42 yards on a quarterback draw. Next, he hit fired the ball to Willie Tillman for the TD. Not even two minutes had elapsed.

The next drive was quicker, Ed Watson catching Wisconsin in a blitz and darting 75 yards to score.

Aided by an interception, Purdue scored again. It was 21-0 inside of 10 minutes.

And when Wisconsin rallied, the Boilermakers went right back to the screens and reverses and tight end patterns that worked throughout. Only once did Ron Dayne and the visitors truly threaten (at 28-17), and Dicken countered with a 44-yard rainbow to Brian Alford.

When Dicken was removed with 7:42 showing in the fourth quarter, Purdue had gained 508 yards on 45 plays, an average of 11-plus a play.

Almost without question, Dicken deserves the mid-October vote over Michigan's Brian Griese, Iowa's Matt Sherman, Michigan State's Todd Schultz and Ohio State's dueling QBs as the All-Big Ten selection. He is averaging 316 yards in total offense, which is Top 10 nationally and far ahead of anyone else in the Big Ten. He averaged nearly 20 yards on his 16 completions Saturday, freezing the Badgers as he scrambled and waved receivers into position.

This from a fifth-year senior who doubted the system would work in the spring. Now he says: "The Big Ten hasn't seen an offense like this."

Badgers bowled over

Wisconsin's Barry Alvarez could have clinched a bowl berth Saturday. He came away stunned.

"We moved the ball, but we couldn't dig out from that 21-0 deficit," he said. "We had never seen Dicken before. This new scheme presented matchup problems that weren't good for us.

"They put our defenders on an island, and we didn't respond very well. We flushed the quarterback a few times, but he was able to get free and make the play."

Tiller, who is making Boilermaker fans forget the post-Jim Young mistakes – Leon Burtnett, Fred Akers and Jim Colletto combined for two plus-.500 seasons in 15 years – joked his team "forced Wisconsin to play left-handed."

In other words, the Badgers were too far behind to grind it out with Dayne, who still had 141 yards.

"People were not defending our tight ends today so we went to them more," Tiller said. "We're not going to let people defend us in overload. In the second half, we ran the ball a little more and threw some screens. We tried some control stuff underneath to keep the ball."

Loren Tate writes for The News-Gazette.