By Woodrow Carroll
The Northwestern Wildcats, eased the pain of a 3-9 season.
Cast in the role of a decided underdog, Northwestern, 3-9 and 1-8 in the Big Ten Conference, defeated host Illinois, 29-10, in Champaign Saturday. The conquest of the Illini not only gave the Wildcats their lone conference victory of the football season, it marked the fifth-consecutive victory for Chicago’s Big Ten team over their downstate rival. It was the first time in a series going back to 1892 that the Wildcats have reeled off five consecutive victories over Illinois.
It was a dominant victory for head coach Pat Fitzgerald’s charges.
Northwestern’s time of possession was 41:48 to the Illini’s 18:12. Northwestern ran 75 plays to 49 plays for the Illini. Every stat favored Northwestern.
Illinois’ linebacker Dele Harding, almost out of necessity, given the Wildcats’ running game, finished with 15 tackles.
With scouts from the RedBox Bowl (Santa Clara, Calif. Dec. 30) in attendance, Illinois, 6-6 and 4-5, did little to impress.
Nine of the 14 Big Ten teams are bowl-eligible and it is painfully obvious the Fighting Illini are not going to be high on the list when it comes time to filling the bowl games with Big Ten tie-ins.
Two Big Ten teams with high bowl expectations will play for the Big Ten championship, Ohio State and Wisconsin, at 7 p.m. Saturday in Indianapolis.
• Just like Northwestern, the Northern Illinois University Huskies closed the book on a positive note last week when they played host to Western Michigan, and won, 17-14. A victory left Northern Illinois 5-7 overall and 4-4 in Mid-American Conference play in head coach Thomas Hammock’s initial season in DeKalb.
Prior to game time it was announced that Northern Illinois’ 1,000-yard rusher, Tre Harbison, a redshirt junior, had entered the graduate transfer portal and would not play against the Broncos. Faced with the loss of Harbison, the Huskies pulled together and recorded the victory.
Had Western Michigan prevailed over the Huskies it would have locked up a berth in Saturday’s 11 a.m. MAC Championship Game against Miami, Ohio. Thanks to the Huskies upset of the Broncos, the Chippewas of Central Michigan laid claim to the MAC West with a victory over Toledo Friday.
In the Big Ten nine of the 14 conference teams have the requisite six victories for bowl eligibility. And, all nine of those teams will make it to a bowl game. In the MAC life is not so certain for bowl invitations.
Thanks to mediocrity, eight MAC schools reached the six-victory threshold. Yet, only Central Michigan, 8-4 and 6-2 MAC, won as many as eight games along the way.
As divisional champions, both Central Michigan and Miami (Ohio) are guaranteed bowl spots. And the MAC’s Buffalo, 7-5, grabbed off the Bahama Bowl invitation against Conference USA’s Charlotte, 7-5, thanks in large part to the game’s need to get bowl machinery up and running for a Dec. 20 game.
• Seventy eight teams are needed to fill 40 bowl slots with the Peach and Fiesta Bowl winners moving on to play for the National Championship, January 13, 2020, in New Orleans. Given the unfancied nature of the MAC prospects of getting all eight teams into a bowl game are not that great. Toledo, Eastern Michigan, Ohio, Kent State, all with 6-6 records, should be concerned. One of those teams figures to be left out of the postseason picture.