In college football's version of powerball, 24th-ranked Wisconsin produced all of the right numbers in a 41-24 victory over Hawai'i last night at Aloha Stadium.

A crowd of 29,088 watched the Badgers improve to 9-3 in Barry Alvarez's last regular-season game as head coach. Alvarez is retiring from coaching to assume full-time duties as Wisconsin's athletic director.

The Warriors fell to 4-7, ensuring their second losing season in June Jones' seven years as UH head coach. The Warriors end the regular season next week against San Diego State.

"We seemed to play not as smart as we needed to play to win," Jones said. "We had a lot of stupid penalties and turnovers that really hurt us."

In turn, the Badgers had success when they wanted to run and when they needed to pass. Brian Calhoun, a junior running back, rested in the fourth quarter after rushing for 149 yards and a touchdown. His 23rd touchdown of the season gave him the national lead.

John Stocco completed 12 of 16 passes — two of his incompletions were throw-aways — for 191 yards and two touchdowns, both to Jonathan Orr.

After studying videotapes of the Warriors' blitzing defensive schemes the past two weeks, the Badgers figured the best counter-attack was a power running game. Wisconsin used tight end Jason Pociask, H-back Owen Daniels and 256-pound fullback Chris Pressley to complement an offensive line whose average blocker is 6 feet 5 and 302 pounds.

"We wanted to counter some of their aggressiveness with some of our own," said Paul Chryst, Wisconsin's co-offensive coordinator. "We wanted to take it to them, run right at 'em. We felt we could turn it into a game with 3-, 4-, 5-yard runs."

The skinny on the Badgers is they prefer to attack the perimeters. The Warriors tinkered with their 3-4 scheme, moving outside linebacker Tanuvasa Moe to the line of scrimmage and cramming as many as nine defenders in the tackle box.

But the Badgers turned their offense outside-in, opting to send Calhoun into the heart of the Warriors' defense. Calhoun, who can run 100 meters in 10.49 seconds, used jukes and stutter-steps to repeatedly induce UH defenders to whiff on tackle attempts.

"It seemed like they were cutting it back up the middle, even though they're really an outside team," Moe said.

UH strong safety Lono Manners said: "I guess they out-schemed us all the way through. They ran more up the middle than they usually do."

Stocco noted that "our offensive line did a great job. They played really physical. They had a really good game for us."

To further frustrate the Warriors, Stocco, taking advantage of the maximum protection of eight blockers, used play-action moves and scrambles to set up passes to the one or two wideouts facing single coverage.

Stocco was never sacked, and scored untouched on a 1-yard bootleg in the third quarter that put Wisconsin ahead 34-17.

"I didn't know if that was Stocco or Michael Vick," said Orr, who caught three passes for 60 yards. "I saw the No. 7, and I got confused for a while. I thought we had Michael Vick back there."

"I don't know about that," Stocco said. "The offensive line does a great job, and I always feel safe back there. But sometimes it's hard for them to hold off all of the blitzes, so you have to make plays with your feet or whatever you can. I was trying to get positive yardage."

The Warriors, meanwhile, could not match the Badgers' offensive strength. UH turned the ball over two times — once on Colt Brennan's interception, another when he was stripped of the football while scrambling — and relinquished five sacks. One of the sacks occurred on third-and-9 from the Wisconsin 17, when UH running back Nate Ilaoa missed a block.

"We had sacks that killed drives," Jones said. "We just have to learn to get it done. We'll be better next week."

The Warriors also never started a drive in favorable field position. Four of the Badgers' kickoffs resulted in touchbacks. The Warriors committed penalties on three of the four kickoffs that were returned. The average starting point for the Warriors' first nine drives was the 18.

"We always had a long way to go," said Brennan, who completed 33 of 53 passes for 403 yards. "It was definitely a tough game from that standpoint."

Brennan managed three scoring passes — two to Davone Bess, who did not return after injuring his upper glute late in the third quarter, and the other to walk-on freshman Aaron Bain.

Grice-Mullen, who led the Warriors with 11 catches for 139 yards, was denied a crucial touchdown in the second quarter when the Pac-10 officials did not rule he was grabbed by freshman cornerback Jack Ikegwuonu while attempting to make a catch in the end zone. Ikegwuonu had been called for two pass interference penalties in the game.

"I was held," Grice-Mullen said. "It was a no-doubter. I was running down the sideline, and the guy literally grabbed my arm. I mean, because they were interfering me all of the other times, I guess the ref didn't call it. But that was clearly pass interference. Everybody could see it on the JumboTron. But that's the way it goes."

It hardly mattered, especially with the Warriors' difficulty in slowing Calhoun or making plays.

"We did good things, but we missed a lot of tackles and sacks," UH inside linebacker Solomon Elimimian said. "That hurt us. We made mistakes at crucial times. We made more mistakes than they did."

Brennan said: "It's like another one of those days where we did a lot of good things, but when it came to winning the game, we couldn't get it done. ... We knew with their offense, we would have to come in and be prepared for a shootout. Unfortunately, the turnovers really hurt us. They got up on us by a few scores, and we couldn't come back. There's no reason we shouldn't have done better. Maybe that's our curse this year. We have to figure it out."

Reach Stephen Tsai at stsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.