If the old "Defense wins championships" adage were actually true, the Big Ten West would have won one by now. No division in major college football has collectively stuck to the "defense and a good run game" approach more religiously.
On average, Big Ten West teams ran 64% of the time on standard downs last season; the national average was 59%, and only the FBS divisions with option stalwarts Air Force (MWC Mountain) and Georgia Southern (Sun Belt East) were higher. They stuck to the ground and asked their quarterbacks to bail them out on third-and-long, and when that (usually) didn't work, they turned the game over to a brilliant defense: The West's average defensive SP+ rating of 18.