MILWAUKEE – P.J. Hill, version 2.0, is a little leaner – but not necessarily meaner.

After running for 1,569 yards and 15 touchdowns as a redshirt freshman at Wisconsin last year, Hill missed spring football practice because the wear and tear caused by his punishing running style forced him to have shoulder surgery in the offseason.

Hill slimmed down while he was sitting out, dropping to 224 pounds from a listed 242 last year.

Going into No. 7 Wisconsin’s opener against Washington State on Saturday, Hill is determined to avoid making contact just for the sake of making contact this season.

“I took a lot of hits, and I delivered a lot of hits also,” Hill said. “So from watching film from last season, there were a lot of hits that I looked at, I was like, ‘I shouldn’t have (taken) that hit.’ So I’m still going to be a physical back, that’s just in me. I like being physical. I’m just going to be smart about the contact that I make.”

Instead of leaning in to deliver a hit on a defensive player at the end of a play, the Badgers’ bruising running back now swears he’ll just run out of bounds.

So in other words, he’s going to look a little less like Ron Dayne and more like, say, Barry Sanders?

Hill just laughs.

“No, I’m still going to be physical,” Hill said. “But you might see a little more moves, running around defenders more than running through them.”

Hill’s bowling ball running style has earned him comparisons to Dayne, Wisconsin’s 1999 Heisman Trophy winner. Hill recently met Dayne and now considers him a friend, but he doesn’t like being compared to him, or anybody else.

“There’s a lot of good backs out there, like Ron Dayne, a lot of good backs in the conference,” Hill said. “But I feel like I have a different type of running game. Everybody probably feels like they have a different type of running game. I don’t think you want to be compared to somebody else, because then they’ll always see you as that person instead of, ‘That’s P.J. Hill.’ So I just want to be seen as, ‘That’s P.J. Hill’s type of running game.”‘

Still, Hill said he is leaning on Dayne for advice.

“That’s a really nice guy,” Hill said. “He asked me if I need to work with him, just call him up. I have his number. That’s a guy that made his mark here, so I was very proud to speak to him. He gave me a lot of support, told me, ‘You’ve got to still go out there and play hard. You had a good season and things like that.’ And I took a lot of that into consideration.”

Besides playing with a little more finesse, Hill expects to be better at reading his blocks and be more involved in the passing game this season. Hill’s success is critical to the Badgers.