Northwestern yet breathes, bowl-eligible but needing a victory Saturday at Illinois to guarantee itself a game in December.
It yet survives, guaranteed at least a break-even season but still annoyingly inconsistent.
That is the fallout from the Wildcats’ 31-28 victory Saturday over Indiana at Ryan Field, where the show was as bizarre and bewildering as NU’s season itself.
Again, as they had on the previous two weekends, the Wildcats carried a three-point lead into the fourth quarter.
Again, as they had against Purdue and Iowa, they coughed up that lead and found themselves in a staredown with bitter defeat.
But this time, unlike those disappointments, they maintained their composure and kept pounding Tyrell Sutton. NU refused to unravel and rallied to grab off the victory over the Hoosiers.
A 3-yard pass from C.J. Bacher to Ross Lane provided their winning points with only 44 seconds left. Then defensive end David Ngene secured the victory when he forced Indiana quarterback Kellen Lewis into a fumble recovered by linebacker Adam Kadela.
Of equal importance to those highlight-reel moments, however, were some bland facts.
After carrying not once in the fourth quarter against the Boilermakers and only twice in the fourth quarter against the Hawkeyes, Sutton carried four times on the winning drive alone and nine times overall in the final 15 minutes Saturday.
“We were maintaining the ball the entire game and were, in a sense, run-happy,” Sutton said with a giddy giggle. “We just played our game.”
That they did.
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“These last couple of weeks have really been testing on us. We’ve struggled in the fourth quarter,” Bacher said. “When we got our opportunity, it was like, ‘OK, let’s go now.’
“The coaches took a little more lax attitude toward the fourth quarter [in practice last] week. It was less stressing that and more, ‘You guys know what to do.’ [They] took our leashes off a little bit, and we just went out and made plays.”
There was, befitting the personality of these Wildcats, all kinds of drama. In the first quarter NU rolled up 114 yards to just 7 for the Hoosiers, collected 10 first downs to none for the Hoosiers and held on to the ball for 13 minutes 12 seconds.
Yet the Wildcats ended it down four points after managing only a field goal off their opening drive and then allowing the Hoosiers’ Justin Pines to return the ensuing kickoff 91 yards for a touchdown.
This is a tough opening act for anyone to follow, yet there was much more to come in this not-so-magical mysterious match.
Bacher, his team down 11 points midway through the second quarter, threw a laser into the end zone to Lane, who rose, grabbed it, then knocked the ball out of his hands with his left thigh and into the hands of Hoosiers safety Austin Thomas. This was the first of Bacher’s two red-zone interceptions.
Moments later, with Lewis shaken up and out for the only play he would miss all day, redshirt freshman Ben Chappell trotted in to replace him having thrown one pass on the season. He threw his second, which NU linebacker Eddie Simpson promptly picked off and returned 41 yards for a touchdown. That still left the Wildcats down four at halftime, but in the third quarter they reasserted their earlier dominance and scored.
Northwestern scored on a 1-yard run by Sutton (33 carries, 141 yards) and on a halfback pass from Brandon Roberson to Kim Thompson. Then, after the Hoosiers countered with a touchdown of their own, the Wildcats entered the final quarter with that dreaded three-point lead.
But this time, tackle Dylan Thiry noted, “We ran the ball a lot more than we normally do late, and I think we trusted ourselves in our play-calling.”
And it was enough.
“You’re in November, you’re playing for the life of your football team,” Wildcats coach Pat Fitzgerald said. “You have to make plays. That’s what our guys did today.”
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