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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
