The Illini football game in Chicago today had nice weather, a decent crowd, and a….meh performance. The offense seems to be light years ahead of the defense at this point. And the Illini football team lost by exactly ten to Washington, which was the opening line that Vega$ had.
The Chicago Homecoming game saw a couple nice plays, but the 34-24 loss was not as close as it sounds. Yes, Illini football hung with the #19 Huskies for 2 1/2 quarters, but they got out-gained 615-327. At Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears, some NFL scouts were in attendance today. But UW looked like the school with much more talent.
Let’s run it down.
-Again Illini Football struggled in the third quarter. Tim Beckman took a question on that:
“That’s something we have addressed with this football team. We haven’t come out in the third quarter and played really this year and again, it’s something that we’ve worked on – you practice running into the locker room and coming out, re-teaching it all – but it’s something we’ve got to get better at doing. Again, it’s that third quarter that’s really not been our quarter.”
-And the major issues Illinois has with tackling:
“Defensively we just did not slow them down. I saw tackling was the major concern in the third and fourth quarter as well as what you saw. We have to tackle better when we’re playing a team that is a top-25 football team,” said Beckman.
-And today we saw why Steve Hull was a DB until this year. His dropped touchdown pass on the opening drive was critical.
-Nathan Scheelhaase definitely came back down to Earth today. His box score 9-25-1-156, 1 TD. And four sacks. His OL looked uninspired. Aaron Bailey had another TD run; but he has yet to complete a pass.
– Jim Cornelison performed the National Anthem, Illini Media Corporation alum Gene Honda (I’m not sure if he was WPGU or the Daily Illini or etc. when he was there) did the PA announcing. So this had a very very Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks feel today.
– Illinois and Chicago Bears legend Dick Butkus did the coin toss. Let’s see if another team from Illinois wearing blue and orange can defeat another team in purple and gold tomorrow in Soldier Field.
-busiest live sports weekend I can ever remember: NASCAR Geico400 Illini in CHI, NU, Sox, Bears, Fire all at home. golf too
-Illini football draw over 47,000. Northwestern had 33,000 attend on the same evening at home. Granted Illinois had a much more marketed game, way better opponent and much better venue. However, NU has all the media hype, better ranking and a much better team going for them.
Listen to me every Tuesday at 10:30 AM CDT talking Illini and Northwestern on 1620 The Zone
Paul M. Banks is the owner of The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. An analyst for 95.7 The Fan, he also writes on Chicago sports media for Chicago Now. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks) and Facebook.