For 30 minutes, Luke Fickell and the Wisconsin football program gave you reason to believe something might actually be different. Then, in the second half, it looked nothing like a team that had “burned the boats.”
The Badgers trailed No. 4 Notre Dame just 13-10 at halftime before being outscored 28-3 after the break in a 41-13 loss to Marcus Freeman and the Irish. Wisconsin has now lost 12 straight against top-five opponents, but this wasn’t 60 minutes of hopeless football. The frustrating part is how quickly a competitive performance unraveled, and how little Fickell’s own decision-making reflected the aggressive mentality he’s asking his players to embrace.
“Obviously, a tale of two halves,” Fickell said. “I don’t have a great explanation for the second half. I give them a lot of credit. I thought that we kind of held the energy and created a lot of momentum in the first half. In the second half, we could do none. They physically got after us.
“We felt like we were in a really good place in the first half. In the second half, the energy and momentum shifted in one direction, and we could never get it back.”
With that as the backdrop, let’s hand out some grades.
