The Wisconsin Badgers were able to beat the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders 42-10 in Week 2, but many came out of the game with more questions than positives.
The Badgers struggled in the first half, leading only 14-10 at halftime before putting up four unanswered scoring drives in the second half as Middle Tennessee wore down. While a win is a win, the Badgers now have the Alabama Crimson Tide ahead of them in Week 3.
Are they ready for the challenge? Head coach Luke Fickell doesn’t think so, at least
not yet.
“We’ll see. No, right at this moment, [I don’t think we’re ready for the tougher part of the schedule],” Fickell said after Wisconsin’s win over Middle Tennessee. “I don’t think that we can play this way, the way we did in the first half, and there’s no doubt about that, and that’s why we said in the locker room, our greatest jump has to be between game two and game three.”
“We’re going on the road to, obviously, an incredibly hostile environment, to a team that beat us pretty bad last year at home. And so we’ve got our work cut out for us, but that’s what you got to find out where you are. And we know that this is a long journey. The thing we learned, hopefully from last year, is we unfortunately rode the wave of the ups and the downs of that really difficult journey, whether it was that game last year, and even late in the year. And then our competitive maturity, the maturity of this team, the leadership of this team understands that like, ‘look, man, there’s going to be body blows. We’re going to take shots. We got to continue to get up.’
“This is not the way we want to play as a whole, in particular, the first half. But we got to continue to grow, and we understand what the journey in front of us and the mountain looks like, and we continue to climb.”
The accountability from Fickell was notable, as the head coach understands that Wisconsin needs to grow quite a bit to be as competitive as they want to be in 2025.
“It doesn’t matter how I feel. The truth is, and what matters is: we got to get ready,” Fickell continued on Monday. “All I can say is, from last week’s performance in particular, the first half, it just wasn’t as clean as we needed to be for what we wanted. And I didn’t say, score more points. I didn’t say get more stops. I didn’t say, get more turnovers, just being the fact of, ‘hey, when we take the field, are we playing to the level at which we want to play, and executing to the level at which we want to play?’ And that’s where that whole idea of that mid-season form we wanted to be able to see, and we saw some things of that in Game 1.
“I don’t know that we saw quite what we’re talking about in Game 2, but that’s where the process, that’s where the journey, that’s where every single week: it is about building and getting better. And so we’ll be ready. I know that, mentally and physically, but we’ve got to go out there and be able to execute, do the things that we expect to do. And so a lot of things go into that. I know it won’t be a lack of preparation. It won’t be a lack of focus. We’ve already talked about that.
“It’s not like there’s going to be some speech that needs to be had on a Tuesday to get guys fired up to prepare for this one. It’s just the ability to say, Now, when you get to that moment at 11 o’clock, can you have the calmness? Can you have the patience about yourself to go out and execute like you have all week, and you have all through fall camp, you know, with the expectations that are in front of you?”
Well, if it makes matters better, Alabama didn’t exactly look ready either in Week 1 with their surprise loss to Florida State. But, they did do damage last weekend against UL-Monroe, and are hoping to continue their momentum into Week 3.
Saturday will be a big litmus test for the Badgers. Last year’s test went roughly. Will the team’s fortunes change in 2025?
