Ignore the final score, which is as misleading as a politician on the stump. The hard and harsh truth of the matter is this: This game was right there for Northwestern to take.
It’s a fact that Purdue ran off with a 35-17 victory over the Wildcats on Saturday at Ross-Ade Stadium, but the reality is, “We didn’t finish,” coach Pat Fitzgerald said.
Thus the three-game winning streak ended with NU still one victory short of bowl eligibility. Yet the Wildcats had led this game by three points entering the fourth quarter before they faded badly.
Oh, what could have been.
“It makes you think twice about what you’re doing,” said running back Tyrell Sutton, who saw his first extended action since injuring his right ankle in the second game.
“It wasn’t so much what they were doing. It was so much what we were doing. It was like it was two-on-one. We were playing them, and we were beating ourselves. It’s very demoralizing when you preach so much about the fourth quarter and you don’t do anything in it.”
The Wildcats went two-on-one throughout the game, which they littered with errors. On their first possession, quarterback C.J. Bacher threw an interception that bounced off the hands of receiver Kevin Mitchell.
On their third possession, Bacher threw into double coverage over the head of Sutton and was picked off again. On NU’s fourth, he threw behind an wide-open Rasheed Ward, and on the fifth, he threw a crossing pass that wide receiver Ross Lane tipped into the hands of Boilermakers linebacker Dan Bick.
Bacher and the offense he guides had been pyrotechnic during the Wildcats’ winning streak, but Saturday they crashed and burned. Running back Omar Conteh lost a fumble. The line allowed five sacks. NU committed four turnovers (all in the first half) and Bacher ended a pedestrian 20 of 39 passing for 208 yards and one touchdown.
That score came on an old hook-and-ladder play he threw to Kim Thompson, who lateraled to Eric Peterman, who carried it in for the touchdown that tied the game 14-14 with 44 seconds left in the first half. The score was a testament to the Wildcats defense, which had stared down the Boilermakers’ own high-powered offense. Then, when the Wildcats’ first possession of the third quarter ended with an 18-yard field goal by Amado Villarreal, NU was suddenly up three.
That was the Wildcats’ advantage when the quarter ended, in the kind of endgame they like to feel they own.
“When we get to the fourth quarter, we don’t flinch,” Fitzgerald had said last week, but at Purdue that’s just what they did.
The numbers from these 15 minutes tell that story clearly: Purdue scored 21 points and the Wildcats zero. Purdue ran up 10 first downs and the Wildcats zero. Purdue rolled up 137 net rushing yards and the Wildcats 4. Bacher was 1 of 8 for 8 yards. Every Wildcats possession but one ended after three plays and a punt. That one, the last, ended with Bacher scrambling for 6 yards as time ran out.
“Play Northwestern football. Nothing more, nothing less. We talk about it all the time,” Sutton said when asked what his team must do to avoid this type of meltdown.
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“Attitude and investment,” he said, his voice as strong and as true as his words. “I don’t think we played off the cornerstones of our program today. The fourth quarter, that’s something we talk about all the time. We didn’t play with any of the cornerstones — the field (position), the force, the focus, the football (taken care of) — none of those, and we definitely, certainly didn’t finish.
“Out of all that, we got maybe one and I wouldn’t know which one it was. In my book, we didn’t get any of them.”
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