[NU Sports] genius or luck?

[Jonathan Michael Hawkins]

On Mon, 7 Nov 2005, Jonathan Hodges wrote:

> Walker made the right decision at that point:
>
> There were 8 minutes left in the game

The final NU punt (the 4th quarter) came with about 9:30 left, it was from 
our 23, and it was 4th and 6.  Methinks there is some confusion here.  The 
drive was a three-and-out, we were lackluster, and had fumbled the ball on 
second down.  Brett's pass to Herbert on third down was incomplete.  Slade 
came out and got a great NU roll, all the way to the Iowa 20, for a 57 
yard monster of a punt.

> offensive possessions (NU was down 2 scores) since the defense was on
> track and was stopping them.  The punt put them deep into their own
> end and NU had all 3 timeouts left, so there was definitely enough
> time to stop them, go on offense, stop them again and use 3 TOs, then
> get the ball back again without resorting to an onside kick.  Of
> course the D did get the stop but then the offense gave the ball back
> on a turnover.

Umm.. if by "got the stop" you mean "the kick went wide", then yes.  Then 
there was the game-ending, stands-clearing interception that Brett threw. 
Good thing it didn't turn out to be game-ending, but the stands-clearing 
hurt.

I find it really interesting that recollections of the game here vary so 
greatly from the official play-by-play... but then, the finish was so 
exciting it's easy to blur the details of what might have been.

Best,

Jonathan