Wisconsin
Vote: What’s the biggest Wisconsin sports disappointment in 2024?
Wisconsin football’s Luke’s Fickell shares his message for team, fans
The Badgers football coach spoke to reporters following the team’s 24-7 loss to Minnesota Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison.
The year 2024 wasn’t necessarily a banner one for Wisconsin sports fans. Which of these will most stick with you in 2025 and beyond? What’s the biggest disappointment in 2024?
Vote for your pick below.
Luke Fickell and the Wisconsin Badgers football team
Year 2 of the Luke Fickell Era was supposed to push the program a step forward from the 2023-24 team that barely qualified for a bowl game.
Instead, against a tougher schedule and after the loss of starting quarterback Tyler Van Dyke, the Wisconsin Badgers took a step backward, finishing 5-7 and missing a bowl game for the first time since 2001.
Fickell fired offensive coordinator Phil Longo, but with another brutal schedule ahead and no clear-cut top option at quarterback, the 2024-25 season looks bleak.
Giannis gets hurt and the Bucks stumble in the playoffs
A late-season calf injury to Giannis Antetokounmpo kept the Milwaukee Bucks star from the playoffs, and Milwaukee was dismissed in six games by the Indiana Pacers in the first round, a second consecutive first-round playoff loss.
Damian Lillard also missed two games in the series and was limited when he played. Though Khris Middleton did what he could, a strange season (featuring a mid-season coaching switch from Adrian Griffin to Doc Rivers) ended in disappointment.
Mets stun the Brewers in the playoffs
A fielding miscue opened the door for a New York Mets win in Game 1 of the National League wild-card series, and after a thrilling rally in Game 2, the Milwaukee Brewers lost Game 3 in the biggest gut-punch imaginable.
With one out in the ninth, Pete Alonso’s three-run homer turned a 2-0 lead to a 3-2 deficit, and the Mets went on to win, 4-2, on their way to the NLCS.
The Brewers haven’t advanced out of the first playoff round since 2018.
Packers drop a heartbreaker to 49ers
The 2023 Green Bay Packers season finished as a success, but there’s the pain of wondering what else could have been.
In the divisional round of the playoffs, Green Bay had a 21-17 lead on San Francisco until the final 2 minutes, when Christian McCaffrey scored a go-ahead touchdown with 1:07 remaining in the 24-21 loss.
Wisconsin, Marquette lose to double-digit seeds in NCAA Tournament
Marquette has to get credit for reaching the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2013, registering an 81-77 victory over Colorado in the second round. But upstart 11th seed NC State, a team that only made the tournament thanks to five wins in five days to claim the ACC Tournament, dispatched second-seeded Marquette at that point, 67-58, en route to a Final Four berth.
Wisconsin had it much worse, garnering a No. 5 seed and losing pretty convincingly in the opening round to 12th-seeded James Madison, 72-61; JMU lost by 38 points in the next game against Duke.
Laurel Burleson, a Dane County chef, thinks ugly apples make the best dishes.
One of her goals as a chef and restaurant owner is to save usable produce from the waste bin.
“I know how hard (Wisconsin farmers) work every day, making these products that are delicious and nutritious and for anything to get thrown away just because it’s not aesthetically perfect is just outrageous,” said Burleson, owner of Ugly Apple Cafe.
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The latest fruit monitoring report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows many parts of the state having great harvests, although northeastern Wisconsin orchards suffered from a cool spring. But most apple orchards are busy with the fall harvest. So what do you do with that abundance of apples?
Burleson shared some recipes and her philosophy on cooking with WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Rob Ferrett: What do you like to do with apples apart from just eating them?
Laurel Burleson: One that I really like to do is making apple marmalade. That is shredding apples and preserving them in sugar so that they keep their structure. It’s kind of the opposite of making applesauce.
But we also make a lot of apple sauce and apple butter. That’s a good way to use a lot of apples all at once.
RF: What goes into making apple butter?
LB: Very basically you make applesauce, so just cook down your apples and blend them up. Then you take that applesauce and cook it extremely slowly, either in a slow cooker or in the oven. Cook it down until it’s dark and rich and more closely resembling a peanut butter than applesauce.
From there, you can put in whatever spices you want: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, bay leaf. You just have to be careful because whatever you start with in the big batch will get super concentrated and reduced in your end product.
RF: With applesauce or apple butter, do we have to be fussy about the type of apples? Or can we mix and match?
LB: I like to mix and match, especially because the apple season starts really early. Some years you can get the first season apples in July.
They don’t hold very long and they’re very juicy, so they break down really easily, but they are very tart. I like to get some of those early season apples and make them into applesauce and freeze them and then when I have other sweeter varieties later I mix them and then reduce that all down into butter.
RF: You shared a savory recipe with us for pork chops with apple bacon cabbage. Tell us a little bit about this recipe.
LB: It’s really fun for the fall and even into the winter. You can kind of use any kind of variety of apple that’s a little bit tart and it’s OK if it breaks down and blends in because the cabbage is going to maintain its structure.
If the onions and apples melt away into a delicious sauce it’s just fine. But also, if you end up with some apple pieces, then it’s a nice little surprise like a little sweetness.
The Ugly Apple Cafe operates cafes inside the Dane County Courthouse and the City County Building in Madison and sells its products at the Monona Farmers Market.
While the Wisconsin Badgers struggle on the football field, sitting at a disappointing 2-2 through four weeks, some of the program’s former transfers continue to find success.
One of those players is tight end Riley Nowakowski, who transferred to Indiana this offseason after five years with the Badgers. The Milwaukee, Wisconsin, native originally walked on to the program as an unranked outside linebacker. After playing sparingly during his first few seasons with the Badgers, he flipped over to fullback in 2022, then out to tight end after Phil Longo arrived in 2023. Nowakowski totaled 18 receptions for 131 yards and a touchdown from 2023-24; his two years as a primary offensive contributor.
The former Badger is already making significant progress toward those totals, now just four games into his Indiana career. He has four catches for 72 yards and a touchdown, plus one carry for a one-yard score. The versatile fullback/tight end delivered the highlight play of his career during Indiana’s blowout win over Illinois on Saturday, taking a 1st-down screen pass 43 yards to the house.
Wisconsin, meanwhile, has received solid contributions from Montana State transfer tight end Lance Mason. The veteran has 14 catches for 177 yards and two touchdowns to date, leading the team in each of those respective categories.
While Mason has been one of the Badgers’ few bright spots through four weeks, it’s hard to ignore Nowakowski’s emergence as one of Indiana’s dependable offensive playmakers.
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Get ready for an overall warmer stretch of weather as we head into this upcoming workweek. After some fog lifts this morning, we’ll have plenty of sunshine today with highs in the mid to upper 70s along the lake and low 80s inland.
Tonight will be dry with lows in the low 60s lakeside and upper 50s inland.
Monday through Wednesday should be very similar, with upper 70s to near 80 near the lake and low to mid 80s inland with plenty of sun.
We’ll start to bring in chances of showers or a T’storm starting Thursday right on into the weekend.
WATCH: Southeast Wisconsin weather: Dry Today, Warm Workweek Ahead
Southeast Wisconsin weather: Dry Today, Warm Workweek Ahead
TODAY: Any fog lifting through the morning, then becoming mostly sunny.
High: 77 lakefront… 83 inland.
Wind: E 5-10 MPH.
TONIGHT: Mostly clear.
Low: 62.
Wind: ESE 3-8 MPH.
MONDAY: Mostly sunny.
Highs: 78 lakefront… 83 inland.
Wind: ESE 5-10 MPH.
TUES: Mostly sunny and warm.
High: 80 lakefront… 84 inland.
WEDS: Mostly sunny and warm.
High: 81 lakefront… 85 inland.
THUR: Partly cloudy with a chance of a shower
or T’storm.
High: 80.
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