By Woodrow Carroll
The University of Illinois football team gained its second victory of the season Saturday, Oct. 2 at home in Champaign with a 24-14 non-conference victory against Charlotte (N.C.). It was timely as fortification for the Big Ten Conference home game against Wisconsin.
Illinois, 2-4 overall and 1-2 in the Big Ten, will play it homecoming game at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9 against the school where first-year Illinois head coach, Bret Bielema, was head coach for seven seasons (2006-2012), each with better than .a 500 record.
The Badgers, 1-3 and 0-2, have been slow out of the gate this season and fell to Penn State, Notre Dame, and Michigan, with a lone non-conference victory over Eastern Michigan.
The Illinois-Wisconsin series has not been close in recent seasons. Ten of the last 11 meetings between the two schools were Wisconsin victories. The lone Illinois victory was the 24-23 shucking Illinois success two years ago when Wisconsin was a prohibitive favorite.
Against Chsrlotte, two back-to-back plays near the end of the third quarter paved the way for the Illinois victory..
The Fighting Illini were ahead, 17-14 with 22 seconds left in the third period when Charlotte’s Jonathan Cruz missed a 29-yard field goal that would have tied the score.
On Illinois’ first play after the Cruz miss, the Illini’s Chase Brown reeled off an 80 yard touchdown. Suddenly, the score was 24-14, in favor of Illinois.
Brown was the big story. He rushed 26 times for 256 yards, Illinois fourth best all time in one game. Mikel Leshoure holds the school record with 330 yards against Northwestern in 2010.
Brown is a redshirt junior with one year of eligibility remaining. He played his freshman season with Western Michigan University in 2018 and sat out as a redshirt transfer in 2019. He is from London, Ontario, Canada.
Charlotte led 14-10 at halftime. The Illinois defense, which has been solid despite recent close defeats to Maryland and Purdue, shut down the 49ers the final 30 minutes.
• Northern Illinois came up big at home Saturday, Oct. 2. The Huskies edged Mid-American Conference (MAC) West Division rival Eastern Michigan, 27-20, in the Conference opener for each school.
Northern Illinois improved to 3-2 overall and 1-0 in the MAC. Eastern Michigan fell to 3-1 and 0-1. Northern Illinois will play at Toledo 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 9. The Rockets are a MAC West member with 3-2 and 1-0 records, and were the pick of many in preseason to win the West Division this season.
The Huskies raced out to a 17-0 advantage before Eastern Michigan closed the gap. The Northern Illinois victory ended a six-game losing streak in the MAC for Northern Illinois which was 0-6 in last season’s strictly Conference schedule brought on by the pandemic.
Northern Illinois quarterback Rocky Lombardi’s five-yard touchdown run put the team ahead, 7-0.. Lombardi’s counterpart for Eastern Michigan, Ben Bryant, a Lyons High School graduate, collected more than 300 yards passing, however, Bryant was sacked five times and saw one of his passes picked off and returned 59 yards for a touchdown by Jaden Dolphin. His interception put Northern Illinois ahead, 17-0 and Eastern Michigan never fully recovered.