Keeping one’s morale up during a losing streak is never easy. That is the challenge Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald faces as his team tries to bounce back from three straight losses heading into a rivalry game with Iowa on Saturday.
One way the coaching staff combatted the challenge was to remind the players of their skills even after the loss to Michigan. Fitzgerald said he wanted to reiterate that, despite the losing streak, the sky wasn’t falling in on his team.
“When you’re in the middle of a storm and you’re not finding a way to win, you’ve got to showcase and highlight the areas we’re playing very well,” Fitzgerald said. “There are a number of areas where we’re playing very well. We wanted to remind them they are great players individually, but we got to be great players collectively as a team.”
Fitzgerald said the key to keeping morale up is to control the voice inside one’s mind. He said his job is to keep his players from concentrating on the fans and media who criticize the team. The key to getting out of the rut is to stay the course and only tweak things when necessary, and to avoid a major overhaul like Tiger Woods initiated after his issues, he said.
Fitzgerald did say, however, that it is not all on the coaches to control the mindset of the players. At the end of the day, only the players themselves can decide what they listen to and what they choose to ignore, he said.
“It falls on everyone individually,” Fitzgerald said. “The first sign of a leader is a guy who can lead himself. If you can’t lead yourself, you can’t lead anybody else.”
Al Netter, one of the team’s captains and a member of the team’s 10-player Leadership Council, said one of the key messages the seniors send to the team is to avoid dwelling on past results, stay focused on the task at hand and look toward the future. To do so, the team stays loose during practices. The cheering, jawing and high-fiving during practice keep morale high – especially in a tough stretch like this one, he said.
“That’s been a point of emphasis for us,” said Netter, a senior left tackle. “Just go out, have fun this week at practice. Enjoy the little things and get better, get better, get better.”
There is a difference between this three-game losing streak and the Wildcats’ last three-game losing streak, which occurred at the end of last season. According to Fitzgerald, the subtle difference is that while the 2010 team lost its edge, this year’s team has continued to play physically and control the line of scrimmage. The true issue with this year’s team, he said, is the big “explosion plays” that suck out every ounce of positive thought.
Netter agreed the issue this season is more mental than physical, but he said that it will take both aspects to beat the Hawkeyes.
“It’s a little bit of both,” Netter said. “This game is going to be a very physical game, but what is going to be important for us is going to be the mental aspect. Just get over that hump, especially at the start of the second half, find a way to become more consistent and not have that lull that we’ve had in the past few weeks.”
One of the few positives Fitzgerald said he takes from fans’ criticism is that they expect NU to win. The added pressure from fans really excites Fitzgerald.
“I like it,” Fitzgerald said. “I like it a lot. If (the fans) don’t (expect us to win), go root for somebody else. We expect to win every damn game. We expect to control the game and win the game and when we don’t, nobody’s more disappointed and nobody’s more upset than I am. But I’m not going to let that make me put my head down. We’re going to fight our way and scratch and claw and find a way to win and if guys don’t follow that lead, then they’re going to have to get out of the way because that’s where we’re going.”
