The Wisconsin Badgers dropped a tough 20-14 game to the Indiana Hoosiers, providing the latter with their first conference win of the year, while they themselves dropped to 5-4 on the season.
In the loss, the Badgers were without star running back Braelon Allen and wideout Chimere Dike, leading Jackson Acker to be the lead back for Wisconsin, while C.J. Williams occupied the starting spot on the outside at receiver.
Following the game, a disappointed Luke Fickell addressed reporters and provided no excuses for his team, citing execution and coaching preparation as the main reasons for the loss.
“It’s execution. It’s no excuse,” Fickell said about why the team lost. “These guys, we’re all here for a reason. We got plenty of guys that have taken a lot of reps and maybe you don’t know their names as well because they haven’t played as much on Saturday.”
“But we’ve got a job to do is to prepare them and we got a job to do is to get them out there and put them in positions where they can do what they need to do and we didn’t do a good enough job of that.”
A part of the execution woes stemmed from the Badgers not completing their objective, which was to start fast.
Instead, Fickell acknowledged that the team did exactly the opposite, with the defense struggling early and the offense failing to put points on the board.
“You know, the whole objective today was to come out, create our own energy, start fast. And probably the number one thing we didn’t do was come out, create energy and start fast,” Fickell said. “And not just because you say you’re going to do it. Do you do it right? I mean, even if you focus on it all week, you know, hey, we got to bring our own energy, we got to make sure that we don’t allow what happened last week and the environment and those kinds of things to affect you this week.”
“And as you look at it, we did a really poor job, I think, to start the game defensively, offensively, finding ways to create some things, come out the second half, at least find a way to have a spark, start to play a little bit better, but then can’t capitalize on any of the other situations that we find a way to create. Comes down to turnovers.”
Now, the Badgers will look to channel in their aggression and play soundly next weekend against Northwestern, who suffered a 10-7 loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes on Saturday.
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