Luke Fickell glad reporter found positive stat on Wisconsin offense

Through three games, Wisconsin is averaging 31.7 points per game, good for 58th in the nation. It’s just taking the Badgers a while to get there as their second-half outings are outscoring their first-halves by quite a wide margin.

Following their 35-14 win over Georgia Southern last weekend, one reporter asked Luke Fickell about that statistic, particularly with their success in the third quarter. He took that opportunity to thank her for finding something that suggested that their offense isn’t as bad off as some may think.

“I’m glad that you found a positive statistic for us (on offense),” Fickell joked.

Something about coming out of halftime does seem to get Wisconsin going, though.

In their first halves, the Badgers have scored an average of 10 points. Then, from the break and on, they’ve scored 65 points, over double their total in their first halves, for an average of 21.7.

To Fickell, that says a lot about his team being able to adjust while also noting what it means about their competitiveness to leave the locker room and have a response for their opposition.

“I just think that we’ve had some adversity, we’ve been put ourselves in a situation that you’ve got no choice. I mean it’s one or the other, right? You come out in the second half and you lay down. Or you come out the second half, you dig deep, and find where that passion is coming from.” said Fickell. “Hopefully it has something to do with the way these guys have trained that. When their backs are against the wall? There’s something that comes out of them.”

“That’s not the way you want to go about it. I mean you’d much rather be able to find ways to start faster and things like that,” admitted Fickell. “But if I look at everything, even in three weeks, what’s the greatest thing you’ve seen so far? It’s just some of those challenges. There’s no laydown, there’s no even pointing fingers because that can happen at times.”

Getting to 30-plus is all that matters for Wisconsin, regardless of when the scoring comes. However, Fickell closed by saying that the trick now is to calculate a way to spread that scoring out over the course of a whole game, like tonight against Purdue, in order to start with leads rather than working from a tie or behind.

“We gotta find a way that whatever that spark is? Whatever that this, whatever that third-quarter momentum or formula is? Let’s try to find it for the first half,” Fickell said.