Luke Fickell cracks joke about 'putting your hand through a wall' when discussing his positivity

Luke Fickell has certainly tried to maintain positivity despite some less than stellar losses at Wisconsin. That included the 38-14 loss at Alabama over the weekend that dropped the Badgers to 2-1.

Fickell never really wants to sugarcoat where his team is at and doesn’t want to lie to the players. But what actually works to get the team back on the right track?

Sometimes positivity works to get them rolling again. Other times, it could be a “hand through a wall.”

“You’re always trying to say, ‘Okay, what’s gonna be the best?’ Not for me, because it feels better sometimes to put your hand through a wall or put your head through a window, right,” Fickell said. “Yeah, that feels good at times … In the long run, I don’t know what it does for us. And so understanding that we’re going to maybe be playing with some redshirt freshmen. We’re going to be playing with some young guys, you know, I can’t say, hey, it’s about consistency. It’s about development. 

“It’s about playing your best ball at the end of the year and then having the most inconsistent guy you know leading and guiding the program. So the ability to say, hey, we’re not, I’m not going to rise and fall on everything that happens on Saturday. It kills you, doesn’t mean you don’t feel bad, but your ability to come back the next day, to pick it up, to continue to move forward, find the things that you need to get better at is really what that focus is.”

Fickell doubled down on not wanting to sugarcoat bad losses or overhype certain wins. Wisconsin knew it didn’t play well against the Crimson Tide and now need to turn it around with Big Ten play beginning. The Badgers host Maryland on Saturday.

“It doesn’t mean, hey, I’m not gonna lie to you, I’m not gonna come in here on Sunday and say, ‘Guys, it’s all it’s all right. You know, hey, we lost one. It’s okay,’” Fickell said. “No, that’s not the case … I think there’s a fine line there and that’s where the maturity of our team, I think, can handle the honesty, maybe even a little bit more than we have in the past. But asking them to have that competitive maturity, to be able to not accept a loss, but be able to move on from a loss, is not something I’ve ever been able to do a good job of. 

“And so I challenged myself, that you know when those things come up, and probably were going to happen at some point in time this year, to be able to do what I’m asking the leadership of our team and our entire team to do so. It’s not easy, you know, but I think it’s what we need to make sure we understand what this journey is going to continue to look like.”