Revenge Week Rolls On: Illini at Fresno State Preview

With the taste of Tuesday night's basketball victory still fresh in our mouths, let us now turn, once again, to football. when last we left our heroes they were running westward into the end zone of Wrigley Field and ruining the three hour long Northwestern infomercial that took place at Clark and Addison. Mikel Leshoure was running for approximately a million yards, and Pat Fitzgerald was driving an imaginary truck.

Thanks to BubbaProg

So now we are heading out to Fresno for a Friday night  road game against a WAC team that wont start until 9:15 central time.  At least we already qualified for a bowl.  The nightmares I could be having about having our season ride on this game give me shudders. Now all that is really riding is a possible better bowl bid.

You may recall last year's barn burner of a game, in which over one hundred total points were put on the board, Ryan Mathews ran for 173 yards on 32 carries, Mikel Leshoure ran for 184 yards on 11 carries, and we said goodbye to Juice and Benn in the worst way possible. The good news is, we play defense this year, their running back is gone, and ours is still here.

I have determined that since the winning and losing of this game is at this point relatively negligible to our bowl standing, that I just want to see Mikel Leshoure run all over the place while we still have him. He is jumping to the NFL next year, I don't care what he has said publicly. I just want to enjoy an NFL caliber running back while he is still on my team, before he joins Mikel Leshoure and Pierre Thomas as a starter in the league. (if that isn't a selling point for running back recruits I don't know what is.)

I am also now in full on prepare for next year mode. I want to see what Nathan Scheelhaase can do at QB, what he can be coached up to between this game and the bowl game. I have my hopes that he is going to take some big steps in these next two games and will benefit greatly from all the extra practice time that the bowl game will afford him.

As for the outcome of the game, well I do expect the relaxed and hopefully now invigorated Illini to run away with this game, but there is no guarantee. They do have a thousand yard rusher in Robbie Rouse, and are averaging 30 points per game. They are 7-5 with wins against the likes of Cincinnati and Utah State, with losses including Boise State and Nevada. This is not a bad team. The key is going to be our run defense, which is thankfully what we seem to excel at. If our defensive line and linebackers step up and play they way they have during their peak this season this should be no problem. This will be among the last games for Clay Nurse and Corey Liuget who are graduating and likely making the jump respectively. Play solid at the line, stop their running back with our linebackers, and this should be a win.

But hey, this could always happen again I suppose.