[NU Sports] Postmortem (was: It's over)

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

> I expected Michigan State to get thumped badly, and Penn
> State to fall a little short.  

Exactly - for all the talk, there really wasn't a surprise in a lot of those games yesterday. Iowa overachieved in their bowl ... Illinois was a "flip'em" and the good Illini showed up ... MSU got waxed by a preseason #1 full of NFL picks that finally played to potential (similar to our 2000 Alamo or 1997 Citrus bowls) ... and PSU was a back-and-forth (and sloppy with turnovers on both sides) game throughout.

> Wisconsin was a surprise, I expected that game
> to be more like the Fiesta Bowl.

Yup - that was a shock to me. And watching the game, I'm still wondering how Bucky lost. They dominated time of possession, yardage, etc. but just choked in the red zone (their clock mismanagement at the end of the half was puzzling) and got away from running the ball. No tears for Mr. Smuggy Smirk, though - Bielema has no one to blame but himself.

> Michigan deserves what it gets, IMHO, though I expected
> them to do better than they did, especially when there were

Yeah - Wisky was at least close in a game where they were underdogs to the unbeaten #3 team in the nation. Michigan is big stinkin' egg of the bowl season for the Big Ten. Yeah, their D sucks - but their O didn't show up either.

It will be real interesting to see what happens with Michigan. They ran a classy (yet curmudgeonly) coach out of town in favor of a slick talker from out east to bring in a more exciting brand of football. It has failed miserably, and the parallels between Michigan and Nebraska are pretty striking. They need to axe this experiment now while they still have some semblance of pride, make a big-time run at Harbaugh and try and get back to prominence.

> I heard more good things about Northwestern overall

Overall, we pretty much did what we did last year on a smaller scale (Tech is no Auburn) - we looked bad the first hour when we had the nation's attention to ourselves, then mounted a furious comeback that had people clicking back and scratching their heads at what they missed. We have a rep as a plucky group of never-say-die underdogs. Now we gotta work on the winning part.

And what NU fans saw yesterday that had to soften the loss some is the true freshmen trio of Marks/Kane/Adonis showing a lot of potential and speed out there on offense. Now if that last interception had just been by a true freshman cornerback ... :)

So yeah, it looks bad and we'll take our lumps and shots from the ESPN folk ... but not a big surprise overall with the matchups (were we favored in any of them?), just with some of the efforts (ahem, Michigan teams).

On to hoops! :)

GO CATS!!!
-SjT

* * * * * * * * *
STEPHEN J. TRUOG
sjtruog at yahoo.com
GO CATS!!! GEAUX SAINTS!!!
Super Bowl XLIV Champions!
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