The Wisconsin Badgers had an ugly 37-0 loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes on Saturday in a brutal game that was over from the start.
The result was especially surprising given that Wisconsin had specifically been talking about this game for the past 10 months and came in believing they were well prepared. Evidently, that wasn’t the case.
After the game, an emotional Luke Fickell had no answers for the performance.
“That’s as low as it can be,” Fickell said. “And I apologize. I apologize to our guys to not be ready,
to not have them ready. I’m dumbfounded in a lot of ways, but that’s my job. And this is a game we have been talking about since January and have been doing a lot of things to make sure we were ready and prepared. And obviously, we were not.
“The first quarter was as bad as we could be. Obviously, three turnovers and just not an ability to overcome those things, even defensively, put us in a really, really tough situation, and we never got our head out above water after that. It is a challenge right now. This is no place I’ve ever been, but I don’t know where else there is to go. So those faces in that locker room, it wasn’t [from a] lack of something to happen on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. We knew it was going to be an emotional game. We made a bonehead move before the game started, which is undisciplined, but it was something that, emotionally, we knew we had to be ready for, and we were not. So I’m crushed, disappointed in myself, in our team, but we got one thing to do, and we got to keep swinging.”
Wisconsin players believed that they were well prepared with a great week of practice as well. But clearly, some message isn’t relaying from the practice field to Saturdays, which speaks to a preparation issue for the Badgers and the coaching staff.
And this hasn’t been a one-game occurrence. That has been a problem throughout the Fickell era, and for some reason, there hasn’t been any change.
Right now, it doesn’t seem like answers are coming soon either for the Badgers.
