With Saturday’s game against Purdue cancelled, the focus for Wisconsin isn’t on a conference championship at this point. It’s about simply getting back on the football field.

The Badgers, ranked No. 10 in the AP Top 25 and No. 11 in the Coaches Poll, were favorites to advance to the Big Ten Championship Game out of the conference’s western division. Instead, a recent outbreak of COVID-19 affecting both players and staff has derailed their promising start to the season.

On Monday, Wisconsin’s game against Purdue, scheduled for this weekend, was cancelled.

Head coach Paul Chryst acknowledged that the virus is bigger than football right now, telling WIBA radio in a Thursday morning interview that his focus isn’t on what appears to be Wisconsin’s clear path to the Big Championship Game.

“But really we just want to have the opportunity to get back, and to do that we had to stop the spread. That is what was most important,” Chryst said according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“And then it is getting back to where we can be practicing and playing games …To look down the road seems a little crazy right now because all that matters is that we stop the spread.”

The coronavirus outbreak, which has affected 15 players and a dozen members of the staff, might impact Wisconsin’s schedule including their Nov. 14 game against Michigan (No. 23/No. 25).

While Chryst was pragmatic in his outlook on the season’s goals and when his team could return to the field, he did offer a pathway for the schedule to resume. Successive days without a positive COVID-19 result and rebuilding the depth decimated by the outbreak on the team will be key if the team wants to play the Wolverines and resume the season.

“There are some positions that maybe don’t have a lot of numbers to begin with,” Chryst said. “We’ve only played one game so we don’t have a lot of injuries to deal with. But there was enough different times throughout the year where different groups got hit.”

Chryst did acknowledge that testing has trended in the right direction in recent days, leading to optimism that Wisconsin can onto the field soon.

The Badgers, 1-0, started the season strong with a 45-7 win over Illinois in their season opener.