[NU Sports] genius or luck?

[Jonathan Hodges]

> 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.

I was thinking of the punt with 4:00 left in the first half when we
had 4th and 3 at the Iowa 41 before the delay of game penalty (to give
us more room to punt).  It was almost in 4 down territory (generally
between the 30 and 40), but Walker made a good decision there to punt
it and stick them in their own end (time ran out despite their
attempts to move the ball.

> 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.

Even if the kick was good it would still have been a 2 score game (a
stretch at 16 points, but still plausable).  I definitely categorize
that as a stop since thus far in the 4th quarter the offense gave the
defense virtually nothing to work with, especially after 2
interceptions and a 3-and-out.

>
> 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.

I think it's because until the final 3 minutes nothing really
noteworthy happened for NU to remember - started out down by 2 scores,
ended the first half down by 3 scores, grabbed a TD on the first drive
of the 3rd quarter but then the offense stalled and it all blended
together.  I think it's more that we're trying to forget the disarray
of an offense that was on the field most of the game, or maybe we were
too busy fending off the intoxicated Iowans that were everywhere.

Jonathan

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Jonathan W. Hodges
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