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player ready...Later, after all the twists and turns, ebbs and flows and crosscurrents that cut through this game, Northwestern receiver Ross Lane was as honest as he is sure-handed.
“Before the game, definitely, there was a huge sense of urgency,” he said. “We had a major sense of urgency. … We really needed this. Everyone knew it. We talked about it before the game. It was kind of like do or die.”
After their flop against Duke, after their disappearance against Ohio State and meltdown against Michigan, it was surely that Saturday for the Wildcats at Michigan State. They needed to reclaim their season, as well as their sense of self, and that is exactly what they accomplished with their wildly entertaining 48-41 overtime victory over the Spartans.
They did it by producing big plays. They did it after twice missing opportunities to grab a victory in regulation. They did it by making the one, big, defensive stop they needed. They did it, most significantly, after failing to show such elan and resilience earlier this season.
The winning points came on NU’s only possession in overtime when C.J. Bacher, radiant this day, found running back Omar Conteh in the end zone for his fifth touchdown pass of the game. Then the Cats’ defense, which six times had failed to hold a lead, did just that, limiting the Spartans to four incompletions.
But overall the Wildcats did nothing less than refurbish themselves, and the prime example was Bacher, who’d had no touchdowns, three fumbles and seven interceptions in his last three games.
“Pregame, he was talking about swagger,” receiver Jeff Yarbrough said. “He wanted to get our swagger back. … Today C.J. brought that swagger.”
Lane noted: “Before the game he said his arm felt the best it ever has felt. It must have.”
Bacher certainly performed that way, ending his day 38 of 48 for a school-record 520 yards and those five touchdowns. And that was not all he did. The Wildcats’ plan was to slow the Spartans’ defense, which had 23 sacks, with screen, bubble and flat passes. Bacher carried out that plan with a jeweler’s touch.
He threw no interceptions. He took advantage of his line’s strong play and suffered not a single sack. He operated with an assured calm and was generous with his offerings, finding 10 receivers with passes.
Yarbrough accepted one of them, a simple post, then split the defenders for a 78-yard score. Eric Peterman accepted another, one more post, and outran his defender for a 70-yard score. These kinds of plays were also new looks for the Wildcats, whose longest touchdown pass until this afternoon had been 16 yards.
“It was a contagious feeling,” Yarbrough said.
Northwestern could have ended it in regulation but failed on two 36-yard field-goal attempts late, the final one on the last play before overtime.
“You just keep playing,” Wildcats coach Pat Fitzgerald said when asked what he had told his team then. “I wouldn’t say [the misses] were a disappointment. It was just another opportunity for us to play. That’s the way you have to look at it. You don’t look at the negative. You look at the positive. … You press on.”
Fitzgerald’s team had not done that against Duke, twice failing late to push across a winning score. Nor had it done that against Michigan, fading late to lose a game that was winnable. On this Saturday, however, presenting one last new guise, it did press on under conditions that could have been deflating.
“We just learned from our last couple of games,” Lane said when asked about this final change. “We learned to respond and how to finish. … It took us a couple of games to get it down. But I think we have it down now.”
“We learned to fight last week,” Bacher said minutes later. “We came out fighting this week and had a different result because we finished. We really took a nice step as a football team.”
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