PISCATAWAY – Unacceptable. Unbelievable. Uninspiring.

Pick whatever word you want to use and it would apply to the performance Rutgers football delivered on Saturday.

The Scarlet Knights failed to show up and forced their home fans to endure an ugly 42-7 loss to Wisconsin at SHI Stadium, Rutgers’ second consecutive loss and a defeat that left far more questions about this team’s potential for the rest of the season than answers.

And if you wanted to know what the fans thought, just listen to the chorus of boos that broke out on at least three separate occasions.

“This was a clunker,” coach Greg Schiano said. “I don't want to overreact but I do certainly have to look at everything, and you can go into all the reasons but at the end of the day, that doesn't matter. You can't have that.”

There are still six more regular-season games remaining, starting next Saturday against a beatable UCLA team.

There are still six more games to get this season back on track, six more opportunities for Rutgers to show that this still can be a memorable season.

But not if the issues that have suddenly struck the Scarlet Knights aren’t resolved.

Rutgers needs to fix them. And fast.

Because what happened on Saturday was downright confounding. Three years ago, the Scarlet Knights lost 52-3 to Wisconsin, also at SHI Stadium.

But that loss made sense. It was the second year of this rebuild under Schiano. Depth was an issue and so was talent. The Scarlet Knights lacked the ability to compete with a good Wisconsin team.

Last season, on the road, Rutgers lost to the Badgers by 11 points.

The Scarlet Knights were closing the gap.

But this latest showing from Rutgers was surprising because of the discrepancy between expectations and results.

The Scarlet Knights are a better team than they were three years ago. They came into this season carrying big expectations – both externally and internally.

So for Rutgers to get thoroughly outplayed at home – even while battling multiple injuries to defensive starters – was difficult to fathom.

A visibly frustrated Schiano after the game was at a loss.

“I'm not moving on to UCLA and all that stuff,” Schiano said. “I'm going to look at Rutgers. Figure out what, as a leader of this program, I need to do and then talk with my staff and we'll out to do it. I know we have really good young men in our program, and they will respond. But you know, it's a tough pill to swallow.”

It’s hard to understand how Rutgers could only finish with 271 total yards of offense, or how quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis could go 12-of-32 passing for 103 yards with one interception – multiple drops by receivers dented that stat line, but so did multiple inaccurate throws.

It’s also hard to understand how a defense – even one battling multiple injuries – could surrender 549 total yards and 309 rushing yards to an offense that's without its starting quarterback, leading rusher and some of its top receivers.

“It was a slow start, it was a slow middle and it was a slow end,” Schiano said. “Like I have to really examine what we're doing, who is doing it, how we're doing it. I thought we played better defensively a week ago and then certainly not today.”

Rutgers has a week to make corrections before hosting UCLA in a game that could either get this season moving in the right direction again or send it more off the rails.

The Scarlet Knights need to fix this offense – again.

They need to fix this defense.

Because while they have winnable games ahead, nothing is guaranteed in the Big Ten.

Just ask Maryland, which suffered a 27-point loss Friday night to a wayward Northwestern team.

What Rutgers showed against Wisconsin was indeed unacceptable.

“Sometimes you get off the track and you don't even realize how you got there,” Schiano said. “So we've got to step back and reassess. You don't have a lot of time. Good thing it was a noon game. We have some time today, a lot of time tomorrow, and then we've got to get into UCLA.”

Somewhere in that time better be some answers.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Rutgers football: Plenty of issues to fix before UCLA