Jeremy: Looking Back @ Wisconsin

Thanks Lukedawg & Twinsfan for the replies on the last post. Obviously a lot of emotion tied up in that Gopher game against Wisconsin, as there always is, but this one seems to sting a bit more.
I agree with both of you to varying degrees. Twinsfan, I see your point about not blaming this on coaching, and you can't blame the entire loss on coaching, but for sure somebody needs to remind an 18 year old kid what to do if the snap is botched on that punt. Did somebody do this? We don't know, but somebody dang-sure should have. And Luke brought up an even bigger coaching mistake with the on-side kick that I certainly was not aware of. It's the coaches job to see what is happening on the field and react accordingly with personnel, scheming and teaching... this simply did not happen in the final moments of Saturdays game.
And for once I'm not even saying it's necessarily Mason's fault. Of course, he is the head coach, and the blame falls somewhere on his shoulders. But there is a special teams coach on this team right? Somebody, a coach, has got to understand the situations that the team is in, and react. And when it counted most, when everything was on the line, a win over one of your biggest rivals, housing two traveling trophies, a Big 10 Championship, a January bowl game... nobody reacted accordingly.
With the success that the Gophs had the entire game against Wisconsin it is painfully obvious that the coaching staff had a good gameplan in place. And the way the team played it's also obvious that they believed in the gameplan and the coaches and they executed. They did what the coaches asked them to do. Are we to believe that suddenly at the end of the game these guys didn't do what the coaches asked them?
A good gameplan isn't the end-all and be-all of coaching. Good coaches know when the gameplan is irrelevant, when to get away from the gameplan and just play good, smart football. It doesn't seem, to me anyway, that this happened on Saturday.