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player ready...There is one fact often ignored when considering cliches and it has nothing to do with their banality or lack of imagination. It is: So very often, they are as true as deep love.
So let us utilize one of them here to capture the essence of this ever-evolving Northwestern football season. The only thing consistent about it has been the Wildcats’ wild inconsistency.
Often, in the sincerest of tones, players and coaches have bemoaned this trait and then, as if they were sinners intoning a holy mantra, they have promised to repent and right their errant ways. But never have they truly done that, never have they just come roaring out the tunnel and offered up a complete game for their fans to savor.
That reality is still true even after they roused themselves just enough Friday night at Ford Field to escape with a 26-14 victory over Eastern Michigan. The triumph pushed their winning streak to three and left them just one short of being bowl eligible. But it was also, once again, as incomplete as a sentence that’s missing a verb.
There was no good reason for NU to revert to this habit it should have kicked long ago. The Eagles, only 2-6, had no running game and, at quarterback, were using a callow freshman in place of their injured starter. The Eagles, in sum, were there for the Wildcats (5-3) to treat as nothing more than hopeless prey.
But these Wildcats long ago showed their disdain for doing anything easily, and again they turned their back on that way from the beginning.
Northwestern kicked to open the game and allowed the Eagles’ Dwayne Priest a return to their 42. The Wildcats held and forced a punt, but on their first series, they were called for holding, they allowed a sack of quarterback C.J. Bacher and Bacher himself threw a ball into double coverage that was intercepted.
That set up Eastern for an easy score that put it up seven with barely more than eight minutes gone, a slap enough to stir the somnolent Wildcats. So inspired, they immediately drove 66 yards and gave themselves a first down on the Eagles’ 7. But, reverting to character, they stalled and settled for Amado Villarreal’s 25-yard field goal.
NU’s offense, so spectacular the last two games, coughed and sputtered and produced only on occasion. But the Wildcats’ defense, so porous the last two games, rose up and asserted itself and keyed their victory.
Their performance, in sum, was mediocre at best. But their resiliency, in the end, was once again enough.
“As a win, wins are wins,” coach Pat Fitzgerald fairly snapped when asked to assess his team’s play.
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