Luke Fickell: Winning's a whole different feeling

Coming into the weekend, there was little to nothing to smile about at Wisconsin considering how the last month of their season had gone. Still, after their bowl-clinching win over Nebraska, Luke Fickell and the Badgers were able to take some joy in breaking through.

Fickell was much lighter than he had been in his postgame press conference following the 24-17 win in overtime over the Cornhuskers. That’s because he knew how much of a sigh of relief it was for their program and how significant it was for them to do on Senior Night in Madison.

“Winning is a whole different feeling. So we can maybe crack a joke or two in here tonight, have a little fun with it,” Fickell joked.

“You guys have seen me the last couple of weeks, you’ve seen me on the Monday press conferences. It has been a stretch. And then not just the last three weeks. It has just been a stretch on all of us I think – every kid in that locker room, every coach in our program,” explained Fickell. “To get a win tonight? It’s so great. It’s deep, it’s deep. I know that we did this for the seniors and that’s the most important thing. But we did this for everybody, for everybody in that locker room because we all needed it.”

After a 5-2 start, everyone was fairly pleased with how Fickell’s first season was going. Those grins turned to frowns, though, after a three-game losing streak with one acceptable enough loss to Ohio State but two bad defeats at Indiana and to Northwestern.

Things weren’t looking much better against the ‘Huskers as they spotted their opponent a two-touchdown lead in the first quarter. Even so, Fickell had a lot of pride in what his team mustered in order to secure this victory.

“Whether it has been expectations, whether it has been ups and down, whether it has been injuries? It has just been such a roller coaster of emotions in that locker room, for those guys,” said Fickell. “I wasn’t kidding when I said they come out every day. They still do the things you ask them to do. They don’t complain, they don’t moan – they just go about their business.”

“We just haven’t been good enough. Tonight, we started off not good enough. We did the exact opposite of what I said was the number one thing we had to do. We had to come out, we had to start fast. I didn’t mean we had to get up 14-0. But I just said we have to make sure that we’re in a good place and do some good things in the first quarter. We did the exact opposite,” Fickell continued. “They showed me that there was something deeper down inside. We’ve seen it at times but not on a consistent basis. They had to dig a lot deeper tonight. We all had to dig a lot deeper tonight because of the way we started and just the way things have gone the last few weeks.”

Wisconsin nearly found themselves in a spot where their season-finale at Minnesota was going to decide their postseason hopes. Instead, they were able to send off their seniors with an exceptional comeback and a performance that they can look to build off of this weekend in Minneapolis.

“I’m extremely, extremely proud and happy, especially for the seniors,” Fickell said.