CSNbbs

Thoughts from the game/general thoughts:

Don't be alarmed by what Minnesota's offense did last night. Their defense is real bad, but their offense isn't terrible. They were in the top 50 of total offense, rushing offense, and passing offense coming in. We actually held them well below their average on the ground. Don't forget the fact we were without our, hands down, best defensive player Tracy Wilson last night. The defense did an excellent job holding them to field goals and getting big stops in short yardage situations.

Here's a stat that boggles my mind from the Purdue game last year and the Minnesota game this year.
NIU: 85 carries, 577 yards (6.8 YPC)
Purdue/Minnesota (combined): 55 carries, 244 yards (4.4 YPC)

How absurd is that? It's amazing how we absolutely dominated the line of scrimmage in those two games. We're the MAC team, they are the Big 10 team. That's not supposed to happen.

Illinois
Minnesota
Purdue
Indiana

Put those four teams on NIU's schedule, two road, two home, and what do you think our record comes out as? I'd guess 3-1. I'd include Northwestern in there as well, they're good but NIU would compete with them no matter where the game was played. This program can clearly compete with the bottom half of the Big 10.

Speaking of that, here are a couple of tweets from the Daily Herald's Lindsey Willhite from last night that I found interesting:

Quote:Since the start of the 2009 season, Illinois has 2 wins over Big Ten teams....So does Northern Illinois, but in half as many opportunities.

Quote:NIU now owns 3 wins over Big Ten teams in its history. Two have been in last 53 weeks. Yet NIU messageboard fans don't like Kill. Whyisthat?

Both are interesting points, especially the last one. For as much as we rip on the coaching staff, they coached a beautiful game yesterday. We threw early to keep the defense honest, and then we hit them hard with the run game. The last 4:18 of the game was managed beautifully too. The defense calls were fantastic late in the game.

Is it just more, or was that the most effective 87 yards passing in a game you've ever seen? Of Harnish's 11 completions, 8 came on 3rd down. Both of his touchdown passes were on 3rd down. Chandler doesn't have to put up great numbers in the air for this team to go places, he just needs to make timely throws. That's what he did last night.

Martel Moore is a monster, and if he was playing in a more pass friendly system he'd put up huge numbers. That TD grab was a thing of beauty.

The reason yesterday's win was so big (besides the fact it was a Big 10 team) is because we're not climbing out of the psychological hole of being 1-3. If we're 1-3 OOC we would have spent the rest of the season trying to climb out of that. Now we give ourselves a nice fresh start heading into MAC play at 2-2 with some momentum.

Moving forward, this team just has to play smart. If we can beat Akron, we'll be through the brutal start of our schedule at 3-2 and 1-0 in conference play. With our running game, if we can play solid on special teams and avoid stupid turnovers, we have as good of a shot as anyone to win the MAC.

One final word to leave you all with: Idaho.

What do I mean by that? The week after the Purdue win last year, we came home and dropped a bad one to Idaho. This Akron team is nowhere near as good as that Idaho team, but this is going to be our 4th road game in 5 weeks and it's right between a big win and and the Temple game. The boys have to come ready to play.

The improvements from the Iowa State game to the Minnesota game are remarkable. The QB situation is solved, the kicking game has come into focus, and we appear to be settled in our offensive and defensive rotations. We're peaking at the right team, heading into conference play. Now it's time to go to work.

Go Huskies.

(09-27-2010 12:32 AM)7 Wrote: [ -> ]Thoughts from the game/general thoughts:

Don't be alarmed by what Minnesota's offense did last night. Their defense is real bad, but their offense isn't terrible. They were in the top 50 of total offense, rushing offense, and passing offense coming in. We actually held them well below their average on the ground. Don't forget the fact we were without our, hands down, best defensive player Tracy Wilson last night. The defense did an excellent job holding them to field goals and getting big stops in short yardage situations.

Here's a stat that boggles my mind from the Purdue game last year and the Minnesota game this year.
NIU: 85 carries, 577 yards (6.8 YPC)
Purdue/Minnesota (combined): 55 carries, 244 yards (4.4 YPC)

How absurd is that? It's amazing how we absolutely dominated the line of scrimmage in those two games. We're the MAC team, they are the Big 10 team. That's not supposed to happen.

Illinois
Minnesota
Purdue
Indiana

Put those four teams on NIU's schedule, two road, two home, and what do you think our record comes out as? I'd guess 3-1. I'd include Northwestern in there as well, they're good but NIU would compete with them no matter where the game was played. This program can clearly compete with the bottom half of the Big 10.

Speaking of that, here are a couple of tweets from the Daily Herald's Lindsey Willhite from last night that I found interesting:

Quote:Since the start of the 2009 season, Illinois has 2 wins over Big Ten teams....So does Northern Illinois, but in half as many opportunities.

Quote:NIU now owns 3 wins over Big Ten teams in its history. Two have been in last 53 weeks. Yet NIU messageboard fans don't like Kill. Whyisthat?

Both are interesting points, especially the last one. For as much as we rip on the coaching staff, they coached a beautiful game yesterday. We threw early to keep the defense honest, and then we hit them hard with the run game. The last 4:18 of the game was managed beautifully too. The defense calls were fantastic late in the game.

Is it just more, or was that the most effective 87 yards passing in a game you've ever seen? Of Harnish's 11 completions, 8 came on 3rd down. Both of his touchdown passes were on 3rd down. Chandler doesn't have to put up great numbers in the air for this team to go places, he just needs to make timely throws. That's what he did last night.

Martel Moore is a monster, and if he was playing in a more pass friendly system he'd put up huge numbers. That TD grab was a thing of beauty.

One final word to leave you all with: Idaho.

What do I mean by that? The week after the Purdue win last year, we came home and dropped a bad one to Idaho. This Akron team is nowhere near as good as that Idaho team, but this is going to be our 4th road game in 5 weeks and it's right between a big win and and the Temple game. The boys have to come ready to play.

The improvements from the Iowa State game to the Minnesota game are remarkable. The QB situation is solved, the kicking game has come into focus, and we appear to be settled in our offensive and defensive rotations. We're peaking at the right team, heading into conference play. Now it's time to go to work.

Go Huskies.

Good post. Yeah I completely agree about Akron being a tricky game. I feel better about Temple at home in 2 weeks than I do about next weekend in Akron.

The Minnesota defense to me is inexplicable. There is no way there should have been holes that big for NIU to run through. I mean to take absolutely nothing away from Spann's night especially that touchdown run, but my goodness I dont think it mattered who was running the ball with those holes. You are right, that should never happen between a Big 10 line vs a MAC line. Did Minnesota players throw in the towel in that game? Something is just screwy with how big those holes were, I've never seen that before even in games where the Big 10 plays teams like Murray State, Wofford, etc.

You're right on about Minnesota's run defense.



If you haven't noticed it yet, go to the 3:25 mark of the video and look at the hole Spann has on the run. He literally has like a 3 yard wide hole to run through RIGHT UP THE MIDDLE. We blocked well yesterday, but there's no way you should ever have a hole that big right down the middle of the field.

One thing I forgot to mention, how great was it to see Cam Bell and Ricky Crider get in on the action last night? Crider has been a nice little third down back this year and has always been good on ST, so it was nice to see him get a big run. Bell could be a weapon in conference play when Spann needs a blow. Dude is built like a truck.

4:40 in the clip. "There's no crying in football!!"

On the radio broadcast, at halftime, Kill said Limegrover put in some new blocking schemes this week (for the Minnesota game). I know I have been a critic of our coaching staff. But kudo's to them for analyzing Minnesota game film and putting in a very effective offensive gameplan.

From watching our first three games, it was pretty obvious with the talent this team has, they were vastly under achieving. Nice to see them finally execute for a full 60 mins and limit mistakes. Hopefully, the Minnesota game will give them the confidence to continue this level of play as we start conference play.

It's time to give the coaches their props, no doubt. I've been as critical of them as anybody but they have adjusted and done a great job. They made a mistake playing Grady at Iowa State but they fixed that. And their play selection at Minnesota was great. For once they mixed the pass and run where you couldn't predict the next play and they got great results. Great job coaches. If they keep this up I will have no beef with them at all.

A few other comments:

-What a great facility at Minnesota, one of the nicest venues I've ever been in and the on-campus setting was cool too.

-The Minnesota fans were very gracious, kudos to them. We were on a shuttle bus after the game and they were complimentary.

-Great throw by Harnish on the TD pass to Moore. He also moved well in the pocket, showed patience and picked up some big third downs. Harnish is growing up and its great to see the coaches showing confidence in him.

-Super catch by Flahive in the end zone on a poorly thrown ball. That was huge.

-Chad Spann, wow!

-Cameron Bell is going to be real good.

-Good call by the coaches getting Hopkins out of there. He was lost on returns.

Agreed that this week has trap game written all over it. Consider:

-The Huskies are still on a high after their big win at Minnesota.

-They could be looking ahead to Temple in two weeks.

-Akron could be a lot better than anyone realizes. They've played a tough schedule so far.

TCF Stadium is awesome.

+1 HMM... it's really nice. I know Minnesota is down now, but I can't see them being this bad for long, that stadium couldn't be nicer.

I pretty much agree with all of the comments above. I really think our WR's could put up some really impressive numbers if we threw the ball more and had a vertical passing attack. MAC teams will have no choice but to put 7 or 8 in the box against us, even in 3rd and moderate situations, so there should be plenty of opportunity for big plays for Moore/Cox/Ashford/Perez etc.

When was the last time NIU had a 100 yard receiving game?

Someone please contact Iowa State and request a do over.
The team we fielded in Minnetanka is not the same one fielded in Aimless, IA.

Yeah, TCF Bank Stadium is amazing. One of the nicest stadiums I've been to, pro or college.

(09-27-2010 09:12 AM)armour248 Wrote: [ -> ]I pretty much agree with all of the comments above. I really think our WR's could put up some really impressive numbers if we threw the ball more and had a vertical passing attack. MAC teams will have no choice but to put 7 or 8 in the box against us, even in 3rd and moderate situations, so there should be plenty of opportunity for big plays for Moore/Cox/Ashford/Perez etc.

When was the last time NIU had a 100 yard receiving game?

Cox had 132 yards in the Ohio game last year.

(09-27-2010 12:13 PM)7 Wrote: [ -> ]Cox had 132 yards in the Ohio game last year.

ty

We probably shouldn't tackle the QB by the helmet with two hands just after he releases an interception. However, I'll take a couple personal fouls if the D stays fired up.

(09-27-2010 10:21 AM)7 Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah, TCF Bank Stadium is amazing. One of the nicest stadiums I've been to, pro or college.

Looked like it on TV too.

(09-27-2010 12:32 AM)7 Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:NIU now owns 3 wins over Big Ten teams in its history. Two have been in last 53 weeks. Yet NIU messageboard fans don't like Kill. Whyisthat?

that was also the first time in a long time that we had what appeared to be a game plan going into a game. it didn't look like they were just tossing the playbook in the air and calling what ever lay was on the page that was open when it landed. if the staff coached like this with regularity, I would have no problem with them. Unfortunately this type of game planning has been the exception rather than the norm.

(09-27-2010 12:30 PM)NiuCoils Wrote: [ -> ]We probably shouldn't tackle the QB by the helmet with two hands just after he releases an interception. However, I'll take a couple personal fouls if the D stays fired up.

true but it wasnt a face mask the the side judge actually motioned it was on his head not the face mask.

(09-27-2010 12:30 PM)NiuCoils Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-27-2010 10:21 AM)7 Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah, TCF Bank Stadium is amazing. One of the nicest stadiums I've been to, pro or college.

Looked like it on TV too.

I was up in the Loge Seats, and got to go through all the donor areas etc....



There are no words to describe. Let me try:

• The gawd darn URINALS had the Minnesota "M" inscribed on the flush plumbing.
• The leather chairs all had U Minnesota sayings engraved on the seats.
• I had a walleye sandwich while watchin the game live.
• After the play, our box had a flatscreen that showed the replay (not the BTN broadcast), as long as it wasn't NIU positive.
• Heaters in the box.

And that is just what pertained to me. The other stuff, like the limestone and brick and Goldy's Lockerroom and the HOF are all on-line for your viewing pleasure.

It was worth every penny I paid, plus we won. Probably the best (though not the most exciting,) college FB game I have ever attended.

Lord Stanley, if you don't mind me asking, what was the price to sit in those seats? Are they just for donor's / season ticket holders, or were they open to the public?