Barn burner in Champaign

coinkat

Illinois wins a real barn burner 31-26. Illinois has not beaten Wisconsin in afew years but still has a slim margin in the overall series rivalry.

I saw part of the second half on ESPN... and while folks can be skeptics of Ron Zook and Illinois football this year, I doubt that the critics will be as vocal next year. There is alot of talent there as well as some real creative offensive formations and play calling... they played a terrific game with very few real mistakes.

As for the Badgers, this is a bump in the road... they never gave up and they will remain in the hunt for the Big Ten Championship.

edited to add:

It appears there was an exciting game in East Lansig as well

Mendenhall deserves to at least be mentioned as a Heisman Candidate... he has proven himself and deserves some credit

Michigan

Spartans fell to Northwestern 48-41 in OT, a wild game. The local paper predicted the Spartans would win by 20 points. Oh well.....


Look for Wisconsin to fall pretty far from that #5 ranking after losing to Illinois.

coinkat

I still think the Badgers are a decent team.

I liked the way Illinois played today. They looked confident, had some great spread formations that made it difficult to predict what was coming, they really did not make any real bonehead plays that were costly and even though Wisconsin moved the ball, the Illinois defense came up with big plays at the right time. Illinois deserved to win.

I would like to see the hightlights from East Lansig... NU played well

Sheamaster

Just got back from the game. Upsets of ranked teams two weeks in a row. This is a team that lost 30 of its last 32 B10 games coming into this season. What Ron Zook has done is such a short period of time (this is only his 3rd year) is nothing less than amazing. Illini at Iowa next week with Michigan at home for a night game the following week. Should be interesting...Go Illini!

Hey Kat, I think I remember seeing your post on college football teams that could surprise this year... good call on the Illini.

coinkat

Sheamaster:

That is correct... I did see something there and predicted a 9 win season that included a Bowl win... 9-4 was the official call. I was not going to remind anyone until a later time

edited to add:

I saw most of the second half on espn... large crowd and looked as if Memorial Stadium was a sell out. As always, it looks as if the Wisconsin fans made the trip down to Champaign.

Unfortunately, the Illinois-Wisconsin rivalry in the Big Ten is overlooked. In 1953, Illinois was unbeaten (RANKED IN THE TOP 5)and in the drivers seat for another Big Ten championsip and Wisconsin crushed them 34-7. 1953 was also Michigan State's first season in the Big Ten and Illinois- Michigan State tied for the conference champions and MSU was voted to represent the Big Ten in the Rosebowl and the Spartans beat a very good UCLA team.