University of Wisconsin linebacker Culmer St. Jean was trying to work up some empathy for Cal Poly kicker Andrew Gardner, but his generosity could extend only so far.

"I definitely feel bad for him," St. Jean said. "If I was on his sideline, I'd be a little upset. But since we're on the other sideline, I'm thrilled. I might send him a gift."

That would make St. Jean guilty of re-gifting because the Mustangs had already handed the Badgers the biggest gift of their season.

Gardner's missed extra point in overtime — his third miss of the game — allowed UW to complete a stirring second-half comeback and avoid a nationally embarrassing pratfall with a 36-35 victory over Cal Poly Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium.

The Badgers' victory gave them a 7-5 record, made them even more attractive to the Insight Bowl, sent out a large senior class in a fitting manner and served as a testament to their recently rediscovered will to win close games.

It also defined this UW team perfectly.

After starting the season with a lofty national ambitions, the Badgers were reduced to this in their finale: They needed a warm-weather kicker to miss three extra points in 32-degree temperatures in order to win in overtime, on their own field, on Senior Day, against a team from Division I's Football Championship Subdivision.

"Everybody thinks just because they're Division I-AA or something and we're Division I that it's just supposed to be guaranteed or ... they're going to roll out the red carpet for us, but that's not how football goes," UW defensive tackle Mike Newkirk said. "They were everything we thought they were going to be and more."

That sentiment was repeated by many of the Badgers, but there's one problem with it. As good as Cal Poly is — and it showed up Saturday with an 8-1 record and a No. 3 ranking in the FCS poll — it is still a team from the lower regions of college football. And if UW needed every break in the world to beat it, that said more about the Badgers than it did about the Mustangs.

Mindful that many UW fans were expected to find something else to do Saturday and seemingly trying to justify replacing Virginia Tech with Cal Poly on the schedule, coach Bret Bielema spent the week trying to convince people that Cal Poly was for real. After Cal Poly's wing-T, triple-option offense proved unstoppable for the Badgers defense, Bielema couldn't resist saying, "I told you so."

"I told you guys at the beginning of the week that I thought Cal Poly had a very good football team and is able to execute certain things from an offensive standpoint that can really change the flow of the game, and that's what they did early on," Bielema said.

Bottom line, we made enough plays to win the football game."

But in making that statement, Bielema essentially admitted Cal Poly was close to being UW's equal.

Indeed, the teams that met Saturday — one from the Big Ten, one from the FCS — were pretty evenly matched. Uncomfortably so, if you're a UW fan.

"I knew it was probably going to be a close game because they hold the ball so long and they're good at what they do," quarterback Dustin Sherer said. "I knew that physically we were a lot better, a lot bigger than they were, but they had a lot of fast kids, they played their scheme well and they're coached well. So I knew that it might be a fight and it ended up being a fight."