memyselfandillini

I would not be surprised at all if you score 63 on my Illini, but am a little skeptical your defense can get the 0.

So I was perhaps wayyyy more optimistic about this game than I had any business being. Good game, Huskers, and good luck the rest of the way.

Oh good. We won't play Ohio State as much with the new divisions so we could use a new trophy game to replace/supplement the Illibuck trophy game. Any ideas? Our current trophy games are the Illibuck (a wooden turtle), the Purdue Cannon, and the Land of Lincoln trophy (a tophat that replaced the Sweet Sioux Tomahawk) in our rivalry with Northwestern. Winged ear of corn perhaps?

Honestly even without TM playing I don't see my Illini holding Nebraska to 10. If a blowout happened it would have to be something like 56-28 or something which again is still pretty unlikely.

Maybe that was the stats prior to the fourth game, but Illinois has moved up to 10th in the Big Ten in pass yards allowed per game. Just ahead of Nebraska. And in fact Illinois is slightly ahead of Nebraska in most defensive categories except Nebraska has wayyyyyy more ints. Nebraska is slightly better than Illinois offensively but both are pretty good with Illinois employing a passing attack predominantly and Nebraska running much more on offense. On paper, if you take out the name and history of the programs, these teams are fairly evenly matched with quite a few similarities. Obviously they don't play the game on paper though so Saturday should be illuminating.

I didn't know whether you were serious or not, but I kind of think all message board names are dumb, including mine, so I didn't really take offense. Especially as a noob poster from an opposing fanbase. I do have a quibble with this message board though because perusing the "smiley" choices just now you have customized "smiley" things to bash Colorado, Nebraska and Texas yet have yet to create one for any B1G foe yet. What's that about?

Sounds like both teams have run defense issues then. But as for the idea that Washington should have beat Illinois by 4 TDs... um what? Did YOU watch the game or just look at the box score and total yards differential? Because the game I watched was competitive most of the way through.

I like how this thread is more about both NDSU and SDSU than Illinois now.

Miami is terrible. And that score by Illinois isn't even reflective of how much better Illinois was than Miami in this game because Illinois pulled first-teamers early and basically didn't try a lot of the 2nd half. A better benchmark is the Washington game two weeks ago. Illinois played mostly mistake-free football and kept it competitive with a very good Washington team but couldn't get the win because not quite enough talent or depth. I am very interested however to see what my Illini do in Lincoln though. There's a lot of risk-taking in the offense with trick plays incorporated into the regular offense, surprise 2-point conversions and onside kicks and the like. Also Scheelhaase is a 4th year starter and actually playing like it. Josh Ferguson has turned out to be kind of a beast out of the backfield on both runs and receptions. So I expect this game to be competitive. On defense, there aren't many forced turnovers unfortunately and too many young guys missing tackles one-on-one.

How have Nebraska teams under Pelini been at dealing with trick plays? Illinois has incorporated them into the regular offense a lot during the non-conference schedule so that could be something you have to contend with next week.

Illinois played SOUTHERN Illinois and not EASTERN Illinois week 1, fyi.