That was possibly the strangest, most gut wrenching, most high blood pressure inducing, most asthma attack and heart attack inducing Illini football games I have ever seen. After the game I don't know if I was happy, relieved, exhausted, or all of the above. Obviously the defense won the game for us, but I loved the attitude of players on both sides of the ball. They kept fighting until the end, even when seemingly everything was going against us (The Iowa OL holding on almost every play, fumbles, injuries to important players, mind boggling play calls). The energy of the fans was contagious and I loved the camera views late in the 4th quarter that kept showing the student section, with everyone standing, yelling, and waving their orange towels.
I am sure BB is already thinking of people who might become our DC next season. The word is out about Ryan Walters and he is going to get a lot of interest for head coaching positions.
People keep bad mouthing Art and somewhat justifyingly so. We all hope Tommy is back next week, but what other options at QB do we have? Do we put IW back at QB? Is Donavan Leary ready? Is Ryan Johnson more accurate than Art? I'm not enough of an insider to know the answer.
I noticed Josh McCray didn't get any carries, which was a surprise. Maybe the coaching staff wanted to give him one more week of rest. I thought Reggie Love looked pretty good, but we still need a 2nd string RB to really step up. We have to find a way to get Chase Brown less carries.
Fabrizio Pinton is a stud. How he was that calm, cool and collected is beyond me. In my opinion he should be handling the kicking duties from now on.
GO ILLINI.