Saturday, October 11, 2008

Laying an Egg and Classlessness

This was a tough Ron Zook-like loss. We win big one week and then turn around and are completely unfocused and lose the next. It reminds me of last year when we beat Penn State and Wisconsin and then travelled to Iowa City and laid an egg. By the way, I'm not sure I want to whoop it up too much that Michigan lost to Toledo today because that loss sure seems to take some of the shine off our performance in Ann Arbor last weekend, even though we beat them handily.

Today we had stupid mistakes early that cost us momentum and I didn't think it looked like we wanted it as bad as Minnesota did, either. We were not crisp and were outplayed by a team we clearly should have handled. It wasn't a gimme win but we should have won.

As for my feelings about the folks on the opposite sideline, this was obviously a big game for Tim Brewster coming back to play against his alma mater. If I recall correctly, Brewster was on Ron Guenther's short list for the head coaching vacancy at Illinois a couple years back. However, Guenther chose Ron Zook over Brewster so it wouldn't surprise me if Brewster wanted this one to show Guenther and the Illini Nation what he can do as a coach.

Call me unimpressed, despite the win.

Why?

The punch Gopher DE William Van De Steeg threw at Benn (ESPN showed it on replay plenty of times) and the late hit out of bounds on Juice. That kind of garbage as no place in the game. And of course the irony is that when Van De Steeg put the hit on Juice late in the game that caused the interception, Mr. Van De Steeg shouldn't have still been allowed on the field in the first place.

Despite this, Illinois should have been better prepared for this game, more focused on the field and come away with the win today. Let's hope we do better against Indiana next week.

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# posted by Chief : 6:54 PM


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