Not that Fickell didn’t try.
“Last week is over,” he said at the start. “I’m not going to speak or talk about anything last week. We’re moving forward. Today, I don’t really want to do it. I don’t like to continually talk about the past. I just want to say thank you and move on.”
Fickell couldn’t help but comment when asked about the impossible-to-ignore cluster of red-clad Bearcat fans who were clearly outnumbered by the Fighting Irish supporters but still were able at times to out-shout the home crowd with chants of “Let’s go, Bearcats.”
“One of the officials said he’d never seen a visiting stadium like that,” Fickell said. “That chanting was a huge factor for us. It was definitely awesome for us to see, and we definitely appreciate it. For the kids and the entire program, it was an awesome weekend. Now, we’ve got to find a way to move forward. We’re heading into league play. One of our objectives, from year one when I got here to year five, is to win championships.”
“It was wild,” fifth-year senior quarterback Desmond Ridder said. “Not just looking at our section, but if you looked at the entire bowl, there were blotches or red here and there. It was breathtaking to hear the ‘Let’s go, Bearcats,’ chant. The Notre Dame fans tried to top it, but it’s something I’ll never forget.
“It made it feel like a home game.”
“There was one guy sitting right above us when we walked into and out of the locker room who was talking to me the whole time. After the game, when we were walking off, he gave me a thumbs up, like he was saying ‘Good job.’ I gave him a thumbs up back.”
While Notre Dame Stadium felt like home for Ridder, a Louisville St. Xavier graduate, he was looking forward to playing in front of what promoters hope is a black-clad, 40,000-seat Nippert Stadium crowd when the Bearcats meet the Owls on Friday for a 7 p.m. kickoff. The game will be Cincinnati’s first on its home artificial turf in almost a month, since a 42-7 win over Murray State. Since then, the Bearcats have had a bye week and two wins in Indiana.
“I’m excited to get back home,” said Ridder, who’s generated whispers of being a Heisman Trophy candidate. “It feels like forever since we’ve played in Nippert. I’m excited to get back in front of the fans and the students. It’s a crazy atmosphere.”
While No. 5 Cincinnati ( 4-0) is playing its AAC opener as the defending champion, Temple (3-2, 1-0) already has a conference win on its ledger. The Owls knocked off Memphis, 34-31, on Saturday.
Temple has been a problem for Cincinnati during the Fickell era. The Bearcats lost to the Owls, 35-24, in 2017 at Nippert Stadium and 24-17 in overtime in 2018 in Philadelphia. Cincinnati pulled out a 15-13 win in 2019. The two teams didn’t play in 2020.
The Owls like to deploy a two-quarterback system of redshirt freshman D’Wan Mathis, a transfer from Georgia, and true freshman Justin Lynch, but Fickell wasn’t reluctant to talk about the past week when it came to defending Temple. After all, Notre Dame played three quarterbacks while trying to get past Cincinnati.
“That will always be a challenge,” he said. “It will be like last week.We knew they had three quarterbacks going into the game, and going into halftime, we didn’t know what they were going to come out with. It feels a little similar this week. It makes it so have you to kind of prepare a little broader, and it puts pressure on the coaches to make adjustments once the game begins.”
FRIDAY’S GAME
Temple at Cincinnati, 7 p.m., ESPN, 700
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