CHAMPAIGN –
The circumstances surrounding Saturday’s game, just 364 days after 2-9 Illinois met 3-8 Northwestern at Ryan Field for the Sweet Sioux Tomahawk, were complex.
Nothing had changed: C.J. Bacher and Juice Williams were still calling the signals. Tyrell Sutton and Rashard Mendenhall were still the feature backs. Adam Kadela and J Leman were still roaming the wilds between the hash marks.
“They’re the same team as last year,” Kadela said. “We’re the same team as last year.”
Everything had changed: Illinois was 8-3, fresh off a win over top-ranked Ohio State. Northwestern was 6-5, desperately needing a road win over its biggest rival to ensure a bowl berth.
And the Illini, after losing to the Wildcats for the fourth time in a row last season, dominated NU seemingly from the opening whistle Saturday.
Illinois turned a corner. The statistic is a cliché by now: eight wins over the last four seasons and nine wins this year. Williams and Mendenhall figured out whatever it was that made them inconsistent and have turned in sterling seasons.
It’s not about recruiting classes or Illinois losing less talent to graduation after last year. It’s all about the coaching and the ability of the individual players to turn the program around.
Illinois simply outpaced its upstate rival. You could see the Illini playing the bully, racking up 541 yards, and NU playing the younger brother, just taking it without much of a choice.
“We just lost, man,” sophomore cornerback Sherrick McManis said. “Illinois was a good team.”
NU is a good team, too. It just can’t seem to turn that corner. Even if this wasn’t the most supremely talented squad in the Cats’ history, it wouldn’t have been out of the question to expect seven or eight wins out of the team.
It had the easiest non-conference schedule in history: A I-AA team, a Western Athletic Conference bowl team from last year that had been hamstrung by graduation, a team that hadn’t won a game in almost two years and a team from the Mid-American Conference that tipped the scales at 2-10 last year.
Its conference schedule was very favorable: The Cats traded road games against Wisconsin and Penn State for home games against Indiana and Minnesota.
How did this team finish 6-6?
Sure, it’s a two-game improvement from last year, but when you factor in the easier schedule, it’s just like treading water.
“There was no question we were going to win more than six games,” McManis said.
What should hurt even more for NU is the example sitting just 160 miles down I-57 South from them: an Illini team that has become one of college football’s hot topics this season.
“It shows that it can be done,” junior wide receiver Eric Peterman said. “It is frustrating for us because we’re right there. We just can’t take the step.”
I don’t know who the blame goes to. Like many things the Cats have done this year, their abrupt end (don’t tell me there’s still a chance at a bowl) has left me confused.
What I do know is these seniors deserve better. It sounds trite, but they all fit the Pat Fitzgerald mold of bleeding purple.
Some, like linebacker Eddie Simpson and wide receiver Kim Thompson, fought through numerous setbacks over their time at NU to finally get some significant playing time.
Some, like Kadela, played out of their minds down the stretch, trying to will the team to that one extra win it needed to keep playing in December.
Kadela had 70 tackles in the Cats’ last six games, including chasing Williams all over Memorial Stadium on Saturday and recording 17.
But all this is just lip service because, for some reason, the team just couldn’t get it done.
“I owe everything to Northwestern,” Kadela said.
I think it might go the other way around.
Sports Editor David Morrison is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
