CHAMPAIGN — The future of Illinois football coach Ron Zook has been a hot topic all week.

After starting the year with six straight wins and earning a top-20 ranking, the Fighting Illini have lost four straight and Zook, in his seventh season, wouldn’t answer questions about his job status.

That hasn’t kept other people from talking about as Illinois sophomore quarterback Nathan Scheelhaase even heard about while getting his hair cut this week.

“They asked me about at the barber shop, and I told them exactly how I feel,’’ Scheelhaase said. “I wouldn’t be the football player or the man that I am today without these coaches.’’

And on Saturday afternoon, Scheelhaase and the Fighting Illini wanted to show their support for their coaches with a win over the 15th-rated Wisconsin Badgers at Memorial Stadium in the final home game of the season.

But Monte Ball had different ideas. The 5-foot-11, 210-pound junior back scored twice in the second half to lead Wisconsin to a 28-17 victory over Illinois before 45,519 at Memorial Stadium.

“It was a tale of two teams. It was a tale of two halves,’’ said Zook, whose team held a 17-7 halftime lead but committed four second-half turnovers in five possessions. “I told them at halftime, we just have to continue to play the same way.

“As soon as we turned it over the first time on offense, they began to think too much. We went back into the old mode. We have to play two halves like we did in the first half.’’

The fifth straight loss for the Illini drops them to 6-5 overall and 2-5 in the Big Ten Conference Leaders Division. And it gave a few fans near the tunnel to the Illinois locker room an opportunity to state their feelings to the coaches and players.

Illinois junior bandit Michael Buchanan did not appreciate the comments.

“You wish you could react,’’ Scheelhaase admitted. “We don’t want to hear stuff like that. We hurt for our coaches when they go through tough stuff. It’s dumb and frustrating. You don’t like to deal with it, but it is what it is.’’

Scheelhaase, who ran for 28 yards and complete 15-of-18 passes for 99 yards, said all of the talk during the week gave the team a chip on their shoulder and the Illini responded.

On its first three offensive possessions, Illinois gained 141 of its 302 yards of total offense and touchdown runs of 12 and 1 yard from freshman Donovonn Young gave the Illini a 14-0 lead with 8 minutes, 21 seconds left in the first half.

“We did some good things in the first half on both sides of the football,’’ said Zook.

But an old nemesis returned on the next Illini possession when freshman punter Justin Duvernois dropped a snap on a fourth down-and-1 play from the Illinois 14. Duvernois was thrown for a 12-yard loss and Wisconsin had a first-and-goal at the Illinois 2.

“The frustrating thing is that we can be a good football team, if we play like we did in the first half,’’ Zook said. “Somewhere along the line, we disconnect when something bad happens.

“I thought we gotten past that last year and during the offseason. It’s a confidence thing.’’

Even after Ball scored the first of his three touchdowns on a 1-yard blast, the Illini came back with a 13-play, 56-yard drive, capped by Derek Dimke’s 41-yard field goal into a stiff southern wind to give his team a 17-7 halftime lead.

But that drive could have been so much more for Illinois if not for a pair of offensive pass interference calls, the second negating a 9-yard touchdown pass to A.J. Jenkins.

“We had two big plays called back, you can’t do those things,’’ said Zook, who really became upset with the calls in the third quarter as Ball scored 5-yard pass from Russell Wilson that looked very similar to the Illinois pass interference play from the first half.

“Everyone in the country runs those types of plays,’’ Scheelhaase said. “You saw Wisconsin score on one of those plays, and they didn’t get called for pass interference.

“Which, I don’t think it was pass interference, but I didn’t think ours were either.’’

Ball’s second touchdown allowed the Badgers (9-2 overall, 5-2 in the Big Ten Leaders Division) to pull within 17-14 and it came 12 plays after a Darius Milnes fumble.

Illinois committed another offensive miscue on the next possession as Reilly O’Toole threw the first of his two second-half interceptions. The Illini defense held this time, but another miscue on special teams cost them field position.

Punt returner Terry Hawthorne looked like he was poised to make a fair catch at the Illinois 35, but he overran the ball and the punt by Wisconsin’s Brad Nortman went 74 yards, the final 30 on a roll, to wind up on the Illinois 3.

“When Darius fumbled, you looked into their eyes and they started thinking,’’ Zook said. “That’s what we have to get away from. You have to go play, things are going to happen. You have to take care of the football, you can’t fumble.

“We have to coach confidence into them and get them to playing like we did in the first half. You don’t give a team that many opportunities — three turnovers and a dropped punt snap — and have a chance to win against a team like that.’’

All three Wisconsin touchdown drives in the second half started on the Illinois side of the 50-yard line.

“Our defense played extremely well,’’ said Zook, as the Badgers had just 285 yards of total offense to 301 for the Illini. “But, if you keep putting the defense into that situation against an offense like that, some bad things are going to happen.’’

And some people are wondering aloud if the next bad thing for Illinois will be the firing of Zook by new athletics director Mike Thomas.

Scheelhaase and the rest of the Illini can’t believe it has come to this point for the program.

“You think it’s crazy when you hear things on the outside,’’ he said. “We win next week and coach Zook is the first coach in I don’t know how long to have back-to-back winning seasons. And if we go to a bowl game, it will be first time in long time for back-to-back bowl games.

“It’s crazy for me to hear.’’

John Mackovic was the last Illinois coach to record back-to-back winning seasons, going 10-2 in 1989 and 8-4 in 1990 and the last time the Illini played in consecutive bowl games was 20 years ago.

And while this team is bowl-eligible with six victories, Illinois is not guaranteed a bowl spot as the Big Ten could have 10 bowl-eligible teams and only eight bowl tie-ins. A win at Minnesota next Saturday would increase the team’s chances for one of those eight spots.

“It’s all or nothing, because it’s our last game of the season,’’ Scheelhaase said. “There is no 13th game on our schedule. We just have to keep fighting, trying to get a win and let the chips fall where they man.’’

But can the Illini do that with all of the turmoil surrounding the program?

“We’ve had to deal with it for the past few weeks,’’ Scheelhaase said. “I’m sure a lot of people didn’t think we could bounce back from last week, but we came out with a ton of fire and intensity.

“We didn’t get the job done, but there is no doubt that we recovered and we were able to bounce back.’’

Kickoff next Saturday in Minneapolis is set for 2:30 p.m. The game will be televised on the Big Ten Network and it can be heard locally on WDAN-AM 1490 and WDNL-FM 102.1.