The oddsmakers? The pollsters? The national writers? The talking heads on ESPN? The reporters from Wisconsin? The fans from Bayfield to Beloit?

Is it possible all of the people who remained unconvinced about the strength of the University of Wisconsin football team even as it rolled off five victories to open the season and climbed to No. 5 in the polls were absolutely, 100 percent on the money?

Alas, it appears they were.

It was unrealistic to think the Badgers would go through the season undefeated, but the most telling part of UW's streak-ending, balloon-busting 31-26 loss to unranked Illinois Saturday at Memorial Stadium was few people outside of UW's locker room were surprised.

Most people looked at the way UW played in its first five games and, aside from the toughness it showed in winning close games, didn't see the Big Ten Conference powerhouse everyone expected back in August. The people who saw this coming had their worst fears confirmed Saturday.

"We're a Big Ten football team and, ranked that high, you've got to come out and do your job every day, every play," cornerback Jack Ikegwuonu said. "You can't keep making the same mistakes over and over again. We've survived a few games this season already, making the same mistakes over and over again. Today, it caught up with us."

It caught up with the Badgers in a big way. The Illini ended their nation-best 14-game winning streak, their undefeated season and any dreams they quietly harbored of winning the national championship. And they did it by taking advantage of the weaknesses UW has shown almost weekly.

Illinois' run-oriented version of the spread offense consistently got the ball outside, an area of the field where the Badgers have been grasping at straws all season. Against Illinois' lethal combination of quarterback Juice Williams and halfback Rashard Mendenhall, they were grasping mostly at air.

UW, which allowed eight plays of 20 or more yards in last week's narrow win over Michigan State, allowed nine such plays Saturday.

"You can't win a lot of ballgames like that," linebacker DeAndre Levy said. "It was eventually going to kill us and today it did."

Nor could UW survive with quarterback Tyler Donovan throwing two fourth-quarter interceptions with the Badgers trailing by five points. Donovan had a huge day -- throwing for 392 yards -- but his interceptions robbed UW of the momentum it had gained against Illinois' porous pass defense.

Donovan has been a terrific gamer, especially considering how much he's had to carry the offense, but his occasional lapses in accuracy have cost UW since Big Ten play started. His two interceptions Saturday gave him five in UW's three conference games.

"Obviously," Donovan said, "you can't have those in big ballgames."

After Saturday, they're all big ballgames, starting this week at Penn State. The loss was only the second in Bret Bielema 's 19 games as UW's coach, but Bielema showed no panic afterward. He urged his players to forget about the winning streak, even though he was among those who promoted talk of it a few weeks back.

"No loss is a good one," Bielema said, "but everywhere I go, everybody's telling me about streaks and streaks and streaks. I told the guys after the game, I didn't think I was going to go through my entire coaching career without losing a game again. ... There's two things that come from a loss, either the beginning of a losing streak or (getting) the taste in your mouth to not let it happen again. Hopefully, we'll take the latter (course)."

Hopefully, the Badgers are good enough to change the course. The sheer persistence of their problems makes you wonder how good this team is.

Afterward, several players said the loss would serve as a wake-up call. But outside observers apparently got the wake-up call before the Badgers did and now UW has to regroup from a loss that left them stunned.

"It's damaging, I'm not going to lie," Ikegwuonu said. "Every team starts the season with dreams and when you start 5-0 a lot of the dreams you have really look reachable. When you lose games like this, games that you should win, it really hurts.

"But there's a lot to play for. The season's not over by any means. We can still win the Big Ten. We can still do all of the things that we wanted to do. We 've just got to stay focused and we can't keep making the same mistakes."

Isn't that what people been saying for weeks?