By Woodrow Carroll
Believe it or not, the last University of Illinois head football coach to lose his debut game at the school was Ron Turner. He and the Illini suffered a 17-point defeat at the hands of Southern Mississippi University in Champaign to begin the 1997 season that ended with the Fighting Illini’s final record of 0-11. Illinois honored Turner’s 2001 Big Ten Conference championship team at halftime of Saturday’s 30-22 victory against Nebraska in Champaign. The Big Ten Conference game originally was set to be played in Ireland, however, COVID-19 forced the change to Illinois.
Since Turner’s inauspicious start to the season, head coaches Ron Zook, Tim Beckman, Bill Cubit, and Lovie Smith, all won their opening games at Illinois. You can add the name of Bret Bielema to the list of successful coaching season starts. Bielema is a former head coach at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Arkansas.
Before a crowd of 41,064 at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois defeated visiting Nebraska and made Bielema a winner in game one.
District 204 and Neuqua Valley High School product Donny Navarro added a kick return for nine yards and one pass reception for 21 yards. On the surface that is nothing spectacular, yet, Navarro, from Naperville, showed good judgment handling punts and kickoffs and it paid subtle dividends in a game in which good judgment was clearly lacking at times.
Next for Illinois will be a home game against the Roadrunners of UTSA (University of Texas-San Antonio) at 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
Similar to Illinois, the Roadrunners are clad in Orange and Blue. A member of Conference USA’s West Division, UTSA’s final record last season was 7-5 and in head coach Jeff Traylor many observers see a likelihood of his coaching at a Power 5 school in the near future.
Nebraska came in a slight favorite over Illinois. The Cornhuskers might have won had they not self-destructed at key moments.
In the first quarter, Nebraska’s Cam Taylor-Britt inexplicably fielded a punt at the goal line that led to a safety for a 2-0 Illinois lead.
Nebraska came back to take a 9-2 lead before Illinois tied the score on a Mike Epstein touchdown near the end of the first half. Another miscue by Nebraska put the Illini ahead, 16-9, at halftime and Illinois scored twice again to take a 30-9 lead..
In the waning seconds of the first half, Nebraska quarterback Adrian Martinez fumbled which resulted in a 41-yard touchdown run by Illinois’ Calvin Hart, Jr. for the 16-9 lead.
It was a dream start to the second half for Illinois. An eight-minute drive by Illinois resulted in an Illinois’ touchdown and a 23-9 lead.
With little more than five minutes remaining in the third quarter, Illinois scored a touchdown again. Illinois quarterback Artur Sitkowski passed to Isaiah Williams on a one-yard connection for 30-9 Illini lead, the end of 28 consecutive Illinois points.. Things looked too good to be true, and, that was the case!
A minute after the touchdown by Williams, Nebraska quarterback Adrian Martinez ran 75 yards for a touchdown to cut the Illini lead to 30-16. .
Prior to Saturday, Nebraska had played 14 games in August, and won all 14! When Martinez passed to Oliver Martin for a touchdown with 3:33 remaining in the fourth quarter, Huskers’ fans had high hopes of keeping that victory streak alive.
The conversion kick failed and the score was how the score of the game ended, 30-22. Illinois survived scary moments.
The game with Nebraska was the Big Ten Conference opener. Not since Bill Cubit did his one-year run as Illinois head coach in 2015 had the Illini prevailed in a Big Ten opener when they defeated Nebraska, 14-13.