It seems that Wisconsin wide receiver Lee Evans will have to wait for his encore.

After shattering his school's single-season reception and receiving yards records and the Big Ten receiving yards record last season, Evans will not get a chance to make a similar impact for the Badgers this season. His injured left knee will now keep him out of action for the rest of the season.

Evans tore the anterior cruciate ligament in the knee in the Badgers' spring game on April 20. He had surgery, and was expected to be out until at least October, with the early return target being the Badgers' game against Penn State.

However, Wisconsin football coach Barry Alvarez revealed Monday that the team physician and the surgeon that worked on Evans' knee told him it would be best for his knee if he sat out the season.

"They've been monitoring him very closely," Alvarez said yesterday on the Big Ten teleconference. "He's been very close to playing, but there has been some swelling occasionally. They decided it that for his long term interest it would be best for him not to play this season and take more time to recover."

Evans, a senior, still has a redshirt season available. Alvarez said Monday that he did not know whether Evans would decide to use that or declare for the NFL draft.

However, Alvarez has been impressed by the way Evans has handled the situation.

"He's been unbelievable in whole process," Alvarez said. "He's been intelligent enough to know not to try to play if he wasn't ready. Sure, he was frustrated, but he knew deep down it was the right decision. There had to be no second-guessing whether or not he was ready to play. He had to be patient and wait until he was 100 percent ready and there was no question by anybody that he was ready to play."

Judgment week

The Big Ten conference race will be much different on Sunday than it is now. Four of its five ranked teams will be playing against each other this week, with No. 18 Penn State playing at No. 4 Ohio State and No. 8 Michigan hosting No. 13 Iowa. The Buckeyes, Wolverines and Hawkeyes are the conference's only remaining undefeated teams.

Though Saturday's games will almost assuredly have a huge affect on the final Big Ten standings, several of the coaches involved are trying to temper the talk of the weekend's long-term implications in talks with their squads.

"I think we've always tried to approach it from the standpoint that the next game is the only important thing," Michigan coach Lloyd Carr said. "It's about how we prepare and how we play in this game. If we have a group of people that are focused then over the long haul chance of being as successful as we'd like to be."

Time to prove it

The only other conference team in the Top 25 is taking the week off this week, and it needs it. No. 25 Minnesota has already qualified for a bowl game with a 7-1 overall record, which is fortunate because it is going to finish its season with a hellacious schedule.

On Nov. 2, the stretch begins with a trip to Columbus to play No. 4 Ohio State. The next two weeks, the Golden Gophers play Michigan and Iowa at home. They finish the year at Wisconsin on Nov. 23. Minnesota coach Glen Mason has to gear his team up for the shot to prove that its record isn't solely based on easy competition.

"I've been reading about Christians and the lions in the Coliseum," Mason said. "I don't know how I'm going to do this yet."