Wisconsin Badgers head coach Luke Fickell wasn’t pleased with how his team finished things in the 41-13 loss to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Sunday, as the Badgers were outscored 28-3 in the second half.
Wisconsin was right in the mix in the first half, and even had chances to go into halftime with the lead, but trailed by just three after a strong 30 minutes of football. That quickly changed in the second half, as Notre Dame marched down the field for a touchdown, while Colton Joseph threw a pick-six
that quickly gave the Irish a 17-point lead that they only grew from there.
Following the game, Fickell pointed out the team’s tackling and how they need to handle adversity, and a similar sentiment followed on Tuesday when talking to the media. With all of the new players on the team, the Badgers head coach believed that the second half took a physical and mental toll on the team.
“Obviously, the second half was not the way we want to go about our business,” Fickell said. “Some things showed that we got to find a way to correct, and it’s not one thing in particular. It’s not a breakdown and coverage or something on offense. To be honest with you, it’s kind of a wear down a little bit of us.
“And so I give them the credit today. It’s a really good football team and the second half, obviously picked it up and I think that for us mentally and emotionally, I won’t say as much physically, but it happened to be physically, it doesn’t mean in conditioning, but I think that there’s a mental side of things, as many new guys as we had, [and the] second half took a toll on us.”
Fickell also pointed to the mistakes the team made, with tackling and the pick-six at the forefront of things, but he mainly pointed to the physical toll that his team couldn’t overcome.
“We made some mistakes that were really, really difficult to overcome, especially against the great football team, but all in all that second half, I think we just wore down a bit too much,” Fickell continued.
“The physicality showed up a little bit. And we’re not a lack of a physical football team. I mean, that’s what we emphasize and stress as much as anything, but I think some of the youth and the newness of our ability to do that for 60 minutes of what we did in the first half didn’t show up in the second half. But there’s a lot of really good things that we’re going to grow from.”
Wisconsin has hoped to regain the edge in physicality after a couple of disappointing seasons the last few years. So it isn’t a great sign to see that the team wasn’t fully ready in Week 1 with a great challenge ahead of them. For some reason, that physicality factor hasn’t been seen enough under Fickell, even though we’ve seen the great flashes of toughness, especially on defense.
Fickell did mention he wanted to rotate guys a lot with the team’s depth, and Wisconsin did do that up front with their defensive front. Whether that’ll carry on to the corners, linebackers, and safeties remained to be seen. Wisconsin has a good opportunity to be physical and assert their dominance over Western Illinois in Week 2, as they’re currently 37.5-point favorites. That will be the next test for this team looking for its first win.
