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For a half, they made those plays in the Rose Bowl.

Then they got run over by a Great Dayne.

Ron Dayne, Wisconsin's senior running back, capped off his Heisman Trophy-winning season by running 34 times for 200 yards and a touchdown to key the Badgers' 17-9 victory over Stanford on Saturday.

Dayne managed just 46 yards on 12 first-half carries, and Stanford's stunning 9-3 halftime lead ignited a short-but-pointed speech by Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez. The Badgers listened, and played followed the leader from there.

On the second play of the third quarter, Dayne led the way, rumbling 64 yards to Stanford's 11, setting up his own 4-yard touchdown run that gave the Badgers the lead for good. Sure, it was only a 10-9 advantage at that point, but the rest of the game was fought in bruising Big Ten fashion ... which pleased the Badgers, although the Badgers never could put away the Cardinal, whose last possession reached Wisconsin territory.

"Wisconsin football is, we're going to line up and we're going to smack you in the mouth," said senior right tackle Mark Tauscher. "And we weren't doing those sorts of things in the first half. After the half, we started doing that."

Wisconsin became the first Big Ten team to win consecutive Rose Bowls, something eight Pac-10 teams -- including Southern California four times and Washington twice -- have accomplished.

And with 446 yards in his two Rose Bowl games, Dayne fell just 14 yards shy of USC tailback Charles White's career record in the New Year's Day game. Including bowl games, he amassed 7,125 yards -- the first player ever to break the 7,000-yard mark.

"I don't know what to say," Dayne said. "We accomplished all our goals from the start of the season, and we locked our jaws after we lost our second game. This is the reward."

Stanford's reward for its gutsy play at the end of its best season in nearly 30 years was nothing more than a close defeat. Key Cardinal players performed admirably despite injuries that had left them announced as out or doubtful for the game ... or did you miss the tears Troy Walters shed a day after dislocating his right wrist this week?

• Walters played most of the game, catching three passes for 52 yards.
• A knee injury for senior center Mike McLaughlin left him able only to snap the ball on the game's first play before yielding to Zack Quaccia.
• A Nov. 27 knee injury had created doubt about the status of defensive tackle Willie Howard, the top Trench Dog. But Howard, like Walters, also played a lot, getting one of the Cardinal's eight tackles behind the line of scrimmage.

Howard helped the Stanford defense to perhaps its finest moments this season -- holding Wisconsin to 331 yards -- but it came undone when Laurel and Hardy appeared to be the only long snappers on the Stanford roster.

Anthony Gabriel, a junior from San Diego, botched a point-after snap after the Cardinal took its 9-3 lead. And a poor snap from John Sande, a senior from Reno, led to Mike Biselli's 23-yard field-goal attempt getting blocked by Mike Echols in the third quarter.

The Stanford defense was considered the weakest of a weak conference that has fared poorly in the postseason the past two seasons (2-8). The Cardinal finished last in its league (and near the bottom nationally) in passing defense, scoring defense and total defense.

Howard and his buddies belied those figures in the first half.

Then Dayne cut outside, cut back on sophomore free safety Tank Williams and blasted through the weak wrap of sophomore cornerback Ruben Carter.

"In the second half, they came out running the ball harder than they did in the first half," Howard said. "And they got us. They did have the ball a little too much in the second half."

Going into the fourth quarter, Wisconsin had its tenuous 10-9 lead and each team had accumulated 227 total yards of offense. Sophomore linebacker Ben Herbert then tilted the game toward the Badgers when he bowled over Stanford right tackle Greg Schindler and sacked Todd Husak on a key third-down play.

That pushed Stanford's punt team back to its own 9-yard line, and Sean Tolpinrud followed with an ugly boot that sailed out of bounds at the Stanford 40. Wisconsin nudged it ahead 8 yards on three plays, and Alvarez didn't hesitate going for it.

After a timeout, Alvarez called "Fullback Flat 28 Naked," in which freshman quarterback Brooks Bollinger gave a play-action fake to Dayne to the right and then rolled around to his left side.

Tight end John Sigmund, a New Jersey native who played high school ball against Dayne and who nabbed all of his six receptions this season in September, dragged Bollinger's way ... and bobbled the pass a bit before hauling it in for a first down at the 25.

Try as they might, Stanford could rarely stop Ron Dayne -- especially in the second half.(AP)

He was the first option on the next play, a route to the right that Sigmund caught and rambled down to the 3. On both plays, Cardinal defenders kept tabs on a Great Dayne turned Great Decoy.

"Ron was the first option on the first play. I was a little nervous, but I finally looked the ball into my hands," Sigmund said. "The second one, I just told myself, 'I got it,' as soon as I saw it."

Bollinger snuck it over the goal line two plays later for the final margin.

Wisconsin's Vitaly Pisetsky, whose family moved from the Soviet Union to New York six years ago, missed a 34-yard kick that would have locked the outcome with 2 minutes, 19 seconds remaining.

But Stanford sputtered on offense until the end. Back-to-back false starts pinned it back on its side of the field for a second-and-20 play, and a delay-of-game penalty turned a fourth-and-7 into a fourth-and-12.

And the Keystone Kops theme to the Cardinal's day was completed when they slipped on a banana peel.

Husak dropped back to pass, caught a glimpse of Herbert firing in off Wisconsin's left side and then dropped to the ground when his left leg couldn't hold up on the dewy grass.

Wisconsin waltzed out of Pasadena with its second consecutive Rose Bowl trophy by shutting out the Pac-10's most explosive offense in the second half.

"There's nothing like doing something that nobody else has done," Alvarez said. "You don't get many chances like that in your lifetime."

And there doesn't figure to be many more running backs like Dayne.