Luke Fickell calls out team to 'play a lot better' in second half vs Northwestern

Wisconsin led Northwestern 14-0 at halftime on Saturday — but head coach Luke Fickell isn’t impressed by what he saw out of his team in the first half.

Despite the defensive shutout, the Badgers had a field goal blocked, threw an interception and punted on three of their first five drives of the first two quarters. Fickell called for his team to step it up and take care of business in the second half.

“We’re still not playing very well,” Fickell told Big Ten Network’s Brooke Fletcher before heading into the locker room. “I mean, the defense is doing a good job to limit some big plays, but we’ve got a lot of things to sure up. We’ve got to play a lot better.

“We’ve got to get back to controlling the line of scrimmage. [We did] not doing a great job at that. We can’t have some negative-yard plays offensively, [so] we’ve just got to sure up some things and be able to make some plays.”

Defensively, the Badgers have allowed just 54 passing yards from the Wildcats offense at halftime. However, offensively, Wisconsin totaled just 75 rushing yards, 10 less than Northwestern. Wisconsin has the edge in the passing game with 109 yards, but Fickell still wants to see more out of his team during the low-scoring first half.

Given that Wisconsin has averaged 47 points per game during the last two games, of course it seems like a slow start. The Badgers also led Rutgers 14-0 at half, but a four-touchdown second-half performance put any question of the outcome to bed. Meanwhile, during the win against Purdue, Wisconsin led 21-6 before piling 31 points onto that total during the final two quarters.

Fans can watch the rest of the matchup live on the Big Ten Network.

Looking ahead, a homestand against No. 3 Penn State looms in Week 9, which could be a monumental victory for the Badgers who still have an arguement to make for Big Ten title berth almost midway through conference play.