The Hoosiers have a chance to catch their breath after starting the season and the Terry Hoeppner era with three straight wins.

Indiana has a bye week before traveling to Wisconsin Oct. 1 to take on the Badgers and their powerful running game. So far, Hoeppner's team has been quite effective on offense and tenacious on defense in beating Central Michigan, Nicholls State and Kentucky.

The 38-14 win over the Wildcats was quite impressive because it was the first time all year that QB Blake Powers had a running game to go along with his accurate passing. RB Chris Taylor torched the Wildcats with 17 carries for 176 yards and showed good speed and elusiveness.

Powers has completed 53-of-93 passes for 718 yards with an impressive 11-3 TD-interception ratio. He has done a good job of waiting for his receivers to get open and has developed a good rapport with freshman WR James Hardy, who is fourth in the Big Ten in receptions with an average of 5.67 and second in the league with an average of 88.7 yards.

The Hoosiers have also shown improvement on defense. In the win over Kentucky, the Hoosiers showed toughness against the run in holding the Wildcats to 77 rushing yards and 217 total yards.

"We did some things up front (on defense) that we really thought would give them some problems running the ball," Hoeppner said after the win over Kentucky. "We played a lot of guys on defense and they came through. I have been high on our defense since spring practice and they really came through."

Hoeppner will continue to drill his defense as it prepares for the Badgers and explosive RB Brian Calhoun.

SCOUTING THE OFFENSE: The Hoosiers appeared to be a quick-strike offense in the first two games since none of their eight scoring drives went 10 or more plays. However, in the 38-14 win over Kentucky, the Hoosiers found the balance and concentration to put together four scoring drives of 10 or more plays. That could be a huge factor against upper-echelon Big Ten teams who will punish opponents that can't hang on to the ball.

SCOUTING THE DEFENSE: There is still plenty of work to do in this area. While the Hoosiers showed significant improvement and did a great job of playing run defense against Kentucky -- just 77 rushing yards allowed -- this is the same team that gave up 408 yards on the ground to Division 1-AA Nicholls State. Wisconsin RB Brian Calhoun probably can't wait to get at the Hoosier defense and it will be up to LBs John Panozzo and Kyle Killion (41 combined tackles) to slow him down.

QUOTE TO NOTE: "We want to be efficient throwing the football and we want to complete 65 percent of our passes or more. Once we got in the red zone, no one says you have to run it in. We ran it in, we threw four touchdown passes and it was just a good day for our offense in terms of moving the football." -- Indian head coach Terry Hoeppner

THIS WEEK'S GAME: Bye week -- The Hoosiers return to action Oct. 1 at Wisconsin. Terry Hoeppner has gotten his team off to a 3-0 start, but in order to compete with the Badgers the defense will have to slow down the Wisconsin running game and find a way to exploit the Badgers' vulnerable defense.

PLAYERS TO WATCH: QB Blake Powers -- He is rapidly becoming a solid Big Ten quarterback. Powers has an 11-3 TD-interception ration through the first three games and has been poised and athletic.

KR Lance Bennett -- He does not carry a huge reputation, but Bennett is one of the better kick returners in the league. Through three games, Bennett is averaging 44 yards per kick return.

DE Victor Adeyanju -- He is a legitimate pass rusher. In addition to 10 tackles, Adeyanju has 4.5 tackles for loss and two sacks.

RB Chris Taylor -- After being held to 95 yards in the first two games, Taylor had a 176-yard game against Kentucky in which he averaged better than 10 yards per attempt.

ROSTER REPORT: Running back Chris Taylor (undisclosed), wide receiver Lance Bennett (knee) and linebacker John Pannozzo (foot) are day-to-day.