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35 Stave, a two-year starter, has been on the mend since injuring his shoulder against South Carolina in the Capital One Bowl. Last season, he took a majority of the snaps and completed 62 percent of his passes for 2,494 yards. Shutting him down now seemed the prudent thing to do for Andersen. "He's a tough kid, we all know that," he said. "We've seen the shots he has taken in games and he gets up and keeps on ticking. His toughness has shined through to the point where I was the one who was proactive (Saturday) and basically went into the training room and said, 'I don't think Joel is right."' The Badgers have made the spring as competitive as possible for the quarterbacks ― Stave (when avail- able); McEvoy, freshman D.J. Gillins and Bart Houston ― and Andersen has been pleased with the way Stave has handled things, especially in the locker room. "He's a team-first guy," he said. McEvoy is a quarterback-first guy, too, Ander- sen insisted, dismissing any notion that he might be merely an "experiment" on offense. Although he was recruited out of junior college as a quarterback, he injured his wrist last fall. To get on the field, he switched to defense and filled a void at safety. "Tanner is a quarterback, he's going to finish up the spring there and he's going to go through the summer there," Andersen reiterated. "Tanner brings so much to the table from an athleticism standpoint. And he's throwing the ball relatively well again under hard conditions." The hard conditions have names: Sojourn Shelton and Darius Hilary. "With two very good corners sit- ting out there," Andersen said of his starting corner- back tandem, "we've had a hard time getting open. All of the quarterbacks have struggled to throw the ball consistently." That has included Houston, a redshirt freshman from California, and Gillins, who graduated from Rib- ault High School in Jacksonville, Fla., at mid-term and enrolled for the second semester at Wisconsin. "If you go off the spring, Gillins has gotten better," An- dersen said, "and it's not just one scrimmage." It's not only his body of work, it's his lithe body: Gillins is a 6-foot-3, 185-pound dual-threat quarter- back. It's no secret that Andersen is a strong believer in the merits of a mobile quarterback. "He's got to be able to do some things to create a little bit with his feet in certain situations," he said. Like when the pocket breaks down or nobody can get open. "The questions that have been answered with him (Gillins) are, 'Yes, he's very athletic, we knew that coming in; he throws the ball accurately and he can absorb the offense,"' Andersen said. "He's a very smart kid. He has not been exposed to all of the of- fense, which is by plan. "But what he has been exposed to, he has handled. He has consistently made plays when he's had the opportunity and hasn't made a lot of mistakes, which is huge for a young kid." Complicating the quarterback evaluation has been a depleted receiving corps. Exacerbating the gradu- ation losses of Jared Abbrederis and Jacob Pedersen have been injuries to some of the returning members of the rotation: Jordan Fredrick, Alex Erickson and Rob Wheelwright. "We have a long ways to go," Andersen said of the Assistant coach Dave Aranda speaks to his players.