Ten Fourteen Eighteen B1G Things
- It was a fun first half at least.
- Jesus Christ Nebraska you were winning when I turned it off.
- Apparently turning the ball over several times in a row leads to blowout losses.
- Illinois will avoid their 5-7 fate.
- As is tradition, Minnesota did the absolute bare minimum to get the win, and they got the win.
- Here’s Michigan, quietly 5-1 in conference play.
The Rundown
Ohio Sate does what it always does, Penn State edition
The Nittany Lions went into the half down 17-14, in what looked like a typical game between the two teams. Then, the Buckeyes learned their lesson from the Michigan loss last year, stopped trying to run
the ball, and scored three more touchdowns to put it away.
If there’s a silver lining to be had, Ethan Grunkemeyer looked decidedly better in his second start, and he couldn’t have asked for a worse one-two punch to get his Penn State career off the ground. Things don’t get easier in a week, but he’ll be at home. If things work out for him at Penn State, every game from two weeks out will look like a piece of cake.
MaximumSam: Good teams win great teams cover.
I was annoyed at times watching this game. It was a three point game at halftime. It felt like Penn State was running the ball all over. Then I checked the final stats: the Nits finished with 55 yards rushing and 200 yards total, compared to 480 for OSU. All right then, carry on.
Illinutgers delivers, for the Illi contingent
Fears that Illinois would revert back to their 5-7 ways after a good season last year were quelled when the Fighting Illini bulldozed Rutgers en route to a second consecutive bowl appearance.
He was a high school quarterback: WE’RE GOING BOWLING!! We avoided the 5-7 following winning season curse. S far as I’m concerned, let’s go ahead and start work on the Bert statue. Last week, Illinois showed us we aren’t great. This week, we showed we weren’t crap. Luckily, we have three more teams on the schedule that are varying degrees of ass.
thumpasaurus: ILLINUTGERS
Minnesota wins in overtime
Everyone’s blowing out Michigan State, and here’s Minnesota doing the least.
WhiteSpeedReceiver: Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you play the 2nd half like it you don’t give a shit and need a defensive stop and a nice series with a pass interference call to beat a pretty bad Sparty in OT.
Death Star, Jr. poured it on
It was 20-10 to start the third quarter, and Curt Cignetti had seen enough.
BuffKomodo: Indiana is 9-0 for the second time in my lifetime. They also continue the trend that Indiana must beat Maryland to continue to the post season in any form. Maryland just simply isn’t good and perhaps Locksly saying that he refused to pay two current Indiana players because they wanted too much money probably wasn’t the right thing to do. Oh well.
The true last test of the season will be next week at Penn State. Yes PSU is having issues, but it’s a roster of Blue Chip players and they will be playing on the road with a banged up roster. Before announcing the Hoosiers as a 1st round bye team, they must first win in a place Indiana has never won. This week was fun, next week will be history defining.
Michigan avoids the Harbor, at home
If the Wolverines beat the Buckeyes at the end of the month, and don’t trip up elsewhere, they, and not Ohio State, would face Indiana in the title game. Think about that.
HoustonBoiler: On the plus side, Purdue didn’t quit and showed some determination to hang around. However, the talent disparity was on display this evening as Michigan didn’t bring their A game but still had enough to win. When facing a superior foe, which is every B1G opponent this season for Purdue, they need to play mistake-free to have a chance at a win. Unfortunately, there were a few costly mistakes tonight – a lost fumble in the redzone, a shanked punt when deep in your own end, getting stuffed on 4th and one near mid-field, etc. Good effort Boilers but you still need to do better in order to win a B1G game.
Rockymtnblue: Sooooo. We won I guess? That’s not nothing. I think this team has some non-trivial coaching problems but it’s honestly a little hard to tell because they’re so banged up and so young. They need this bye week badly. Next two after that are on the road, where Michigan has been…not good.
BoilerUp89: well Purdue covered the spread. I’ve long since run out of ways to describe losing close games. The college basketball season starts at 8 am Monday. I’m looking forward to it and hope the rest of you are too
Narrator: We are not looking forward to the basketball season.
What the FUCK Nebraska?!
I thought you were over this close game bullshit?
BigRed_Twice: The Huskers kept this closer than I thought they would– that’s the good news. But an extremely ill-timed injury early in the second half to Dylan Raiola all-but-extinguished Husker hopes. TJ LaTeef gave it a decent go for the rest of the half, but there just weren’t quite enough tricks available for the Huskers. The defense played fairly well, for which we should be thankful.
The Huskers’ long drought against ranked teams continues.
Narrator: So that’s what happened.
