BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer
MADISON, Wis. — Jack Cichy sat contently on a stool in front of his locker following Saturday's stirring come-from-behind 31-17 win over Minnesota. Moments earlier, he had posed for a group photo with the linebackers and Paul Bunyan's Axe.
Cichy was easy to identify. He was the third from the left. The one with his left arm in a sling. His season came to a crashing halt a little over a month ago at Iowa. Torn pectoral. For someone so animated, so energized, so hyper, it has been tough to watch the last five games.
While nimbly putting on his shoes with the use of his right hand only, Cichy was enjoying the postgame revelry in the room and saying, "If I wasn't able to be around these guys — just being around them on the sideline with a headset on — I don't know if I'd be able to make it."
Earlier in the week, Cichy became the official guardian of the Axe at every practice.
"This game means a lot to me. I mean, all the games do, but this game literally hits close to home," said Cichy, who grew up in Somerset — not far from the Minnesota border.
"I know some guys on the Minnesota team and I just wanted it to hit home with some of the freshmen how important this game really is to everybody."
Cichy has the equivalent of Badgers-Gophers dual citizenship, so to speak. He graduated from Hill-Murray School in Maplewood, Minnesota, a 20-mile trip from his home.
Make no mistake about it, though. Cichy bleeds red. And that's what he was doing at halftime along with his UW teammates after Minnesota took a 17-7 lead here Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium.
There was no more graphic reference than T.J. Watt saying afterward that the Gophers had punched the Badgers in the mouth and they were tasting their own blood after getting outplayed.
"It was just really uncharacteristic of us," Cichy said. "I don't know if it was Senior Day or what. But we really started out flat and we came in at halftime and analyzed it.
"We weren't playing team defense. That has really been our calling card all year. 'Alright,' we said, 'We've got to rectify that.' A lot of it was on ourselves."
Wisconsin's senior safety Leo Musso took it a step further by grabbing the Axe and reminding everybody what they were playing for. Watt also had a few choice words for the defense.
"Stop thinking about everything, let's just have some fun," he pleaded. "Let's get back to Wisconsin football and swarming to the ball. We're trying to do too much. We're not swarming."
Later, he admitted, "I said something from the heart just to get the guys going."
It was time to show some grit and punch back. The message resonated throughout the room.
"They were out-physicaling us in the first half," said linebacker T.J. Edwards. "We weren't getting knockbacks (on the line of scrimmage) and we weren't making tackles.
"We didn't come out the way we needed to come out. We were killing ourselves. T.J. talked to the defense and got us fired up. He said exactly what he needed to say."
To illustrate what they were all feeling: Minnesota ran for 115 yards in the first half against the No. 1 rushing defense in the Big Ten that was giving up, on the average, only 98 yards per game.
"We weren't being ourselves in the first half," said senior linebacker Vince Biegel. "We were making mistakes, mental errors, all of us. We had to push it aside and understand what was at stake.
"That's keeping the Axe."
That led Musso to grabbing the prize and holding it up as a reminder, a wakeup call.
"We just kind of got outside of ourselves a little bit," Musso said. "We just needed to relax and do what we do and that's just being confident and playing fast."
There were several turning points in the second half, beginning with the first possession of the third quarter. The struggling UW offense, which had been held to 46 rushing yards, made a statement by putting some points on the board: a 33-yard Andrew Endicott field goal to cap a 12-play, 60-yard drive.
Even though there were no big plays — the longest run was 12 yards and it belonged to quarterback Bart Houston, who had taken over permanently after Alex Hornibrook was knocked out of the game — it was a positive signal for the defense. "We feed off one another," Musso said.
But when the Gophers touched the ball for the first time in the second half, they were still in attack mode with quarterback Mitch Leidner, who completed a 22-yard pass to Rashad Still on their first play. At that point, Leidner was 8-of-13 for 133 yards, a far cry from his 5-for-18 for 95 in the 2014 game.
After drawing a pass interference flag on UW cornerback Sojourn Shelton, a 15-yard penalty, Leidner then completed a 25-yard toss to tailback Rodney Smith who made an acrobatic adjustment in mid air and took the ball away from Musso, who was slow to get off the turf.
It would turn out to be Leidner's last completion of the game.
On third-and-9 from the Wisconsin 14, Leidner saw Still run past cornerback Lubern Figaro. He saw Still open in the far right corner of the end zone. What he didn't see was Musso, who had duped Leidner, a veteran of 40 career starts, into thinking it was a different coverage.
"It was a Cover 2," Musso said. "We disguised that it was a man-to-man Cover 1. The quarterback thought he had our corner beat. It was nice that it worked out that way."
Musso picked off the pass to deprive the Gophers from getting any points out of the series and they were all but guaranteed a field goal, at the very least, since placekicker Emmit Carpenter was 1-for-1 for the game and 21-of-23 for the season.
"It took only one play to spark us," said Biegel. "Once we got that one play, we were able to get on a roll and we were feeling it. They were driving on us and Musso's interception really snowballed. One play leads to another. You're stuck in the mud and all of a sudden you get that play from Leo."
Actions speak far louder than words, Watt stressed.
"It's easy to say, 'Let's have energy,'" he noted. "But it's another thing to actually have energy. All we said at halftime is that we needed just one play to get things going and spark us. And any time you can get a takeaway it's huge, it's a big deal. It gets momentum going."
In truth, the Badgers really didn't have much momentum on offense at the end of the third quarter after Houston was sacked for a loss of 8 yards. The Gophers were still clinging to a 17-10 lead and they were getting the ball back in good field position — the UW 47.
On third down, Leidner was pressured and misread the route of his receiver. Or maybe his receiver ran the wrong route. Whatever the case, Leidner's pass was intercepted by Shelton and returned 40 yards to the Minnesota 19. Three plays later, the Badgers forged into a 17-17 tie.
"We had spurts of momentum in the second half," Cichy observed. "And we kept saying (on the sideline) that we've got to ride the wave."
Added Watt, "You saw it. When we're rolling, we're rolling. And it's hard to stop us. We got after him (Leidner) a little more, dialed up more blitzes and you could see mentally that he was beat."
One of the biggest plays of the second half was a tackle, not a pick. With the score still tied, the Gophers faced a third-and-3 from their own 48. Leidner had success running some read option in the first half but they got away from it and Smith was dumped for no gain by Ryan Connelly.
It was a full circle scenario for Connelly, who made a key stop on a Leonard Fournette screen in the opening game of the season against LSU that led to Wisconsin's game-winning drive. This would be the same Ryan Connelly who was pressed into service as a starting inside linebacker after the Cichy injury.
After a Minnesota punt, and an offside penalty on the Gophers, the Badgers dialed up the trusty jet sweep and Jazz Peavy rambled 71 yards before being caught. The point of attack was redshirt freshman defensive end Winston DeLattiboudere, who lost contain.
A true freshman safety, Antoine Winfield, compounded DeLattiboudere's breakdown by getting penalized for a personal foul on UW tight end Eric Steffes. That left the Badgers with a first-and-goal from the 5. Two players later, Corey Clement backed into the end zone for the lead.
That would assure that the Badgers would not back into the Big Ten Championship Game in Indy. Instead, they rallied for 24 unanswered points on the strength of four interceptions overall. Shelton picked off his second of the game and Leon Jacobs the first of his career.
Vindication? Validation?
Cichy suggested it was resiliency.
"That's hard-wired in," he said. "Whether we come here with it or we get it beat into us during workouts, it's something that is really absorbed during our time here at Wisconsin. And it was evident today and a testament to this team. I took a lot of pride in watching the guys bow up and take control."
Pondering how far this team has come this season to survive the early schedule and play Penn State for the conference title, and potentially a spot in football's final four, Cichy said, "It's awesome. All we ever wanted was a chance and now we have that chance and we're going to try and run with it."
But, first, they ran around the field with the Axe for a 13th-straight season.
"Check that goal off the list," Watt said. "And we're on to the next one."
