18 B1G Things
- They Iowa'd Iowa just to spite me personally.
- At this rate the Big Ten will be the one-bid league.
- Double the NIL as Penn State just to repeat the collapse.
The Rundown
By not turning the ball over, Indiana somehow beats Michigan
Why didn't Penn State think of that a week ago?!
IUinVA: Cignetti flipped IU in record time, but wins against Michigan are still extremely rare for this program. A lifetime in the football gutter means that any win against Michigan is a big deal and should be celebrated. This was the toughest remaining game on the schedule and getting the win is absolutely huge.
Cignetti’s strategy was to punt and play defense, and although Michigan threatened, it worked out in the end. In the postgame, he mentioned that Hoover was hurting all week. After two terrible performances, the running game had to step up, and they definitely looked much improved. In the end, Hoover had to make one throw to win it in OT and he made it. IU’s defense remains championship caliber. IU survived.
BuffKomodo: I fortunately got to miss a majority of the 2nd half basically until overtime. It does not feel like I missed much, which is either good or bad.
Good or bad. I mean college football this year is a good or bad opinion test, right? I mean is beating Michigan good or bad? Is winning on the road against a team that has no QB good or bad? Is winning in a place you haven’t won since ‘67 and beating the mighty Wolverines back to back since the 50’s good or bad?
My point is, the point is to win games. You have to win games. Ugly. Pretty. Come this time in the schedule it doesn’t matter. Just win. Indiana surviving to be 7-1 with remaining games against Minnesota, Washington, and Purdue play in its favor be being 10-2. The matchup vs USC feels like it leans 11-1. With Ohio state’s QB situation, you feel like a return to Indianapolis and the CFP is very much in play.
Those looking to cast stones at the team on top can. They have some genuine points like the offense isn’t good. It’s not. It’s average at best.
Indiana is 7-1 though with a game vs Minnesota before a much needed bye week though. Go Hoosiers.
Brian (no longer Gillis): No moral victories in this one. That Michigan played the champs as tough as it did only made the final outcome more painful.
Northwestern beats Rutgers. The sky is blue. More at 11.
What does the Rutgers admin do now that their most successful coach is getting worse and worse results with each year?
LincolnParkWildcat: We took care of business against Rutgers 42 to 14 and moved to bowl eligibility at 6-1. Aidan Chiles was 19 / 25 , averaging 8.8 yards for a total 3 passing touchdowns (and one interception). He also rushed for 83 yards and had two touchdowns. Caleb Komolafe carried the ball 13 times for 150 yards and had one touchdown.
Rutgers is just epic giga ass bad.
Next week we travel to Eugene to play the Oregon Ducks
MinnesotaWildcat: My concern coming into this one was that Rutgers would just spam the "throw it to KJ Duff" button. Well, by midway through the second quarter, as backup QB AJ Surace was throwing it high and wide on a simple out to a different wide receiver, you could see Duff visibly losing interest.
Can you blame him? My word, Rutgers is just three different kinds of dogshit.
Northwestern moved the ball almost at will for most of this one: Griffin Wilde's an NFL-caliber wideout, Caleb Komolafe is seeing holes so well right now, and Aidan Chiles appears to have such a nice grasp on what's needed of him at the moment. 'Cats did what--and it feels really weird to say this, given that I had them going 6-6 at best--we should expect they should do against a putrid Rutgers squad: bury them.
There are questions left, if I'm being nitpicky, including the run defense. Chief among them, though, is this: who's the best team Northwestern's beaten?
If you said "South Dakota State"...you're probably right?
SP+ still says Penn State, but man...I'm still not sure just how good this Northwestern club is. There's room for them to be great. But now begins the real test: @Oregon, Iowa, @Ohio State, @Minnesota, Illinois. Come out of that 3-2, and I might be convinced. At this point, regardless, Northwestern's going to a bowl game, and that's absolutely ridiculous to think at this point of the season. Let's get weird.
Illinois beats Oregon 21-10
Remember when Oregon was going to win a national title because they're the most talented team in the country and everyone returns and blah blah blah? I guess Phil Knight doesn't need the money, but still, you could have gotten this result for half a James Franklin.
He was a high school quarterback: Bye week Bert rides again!! Barry Lunney Jr had a great second half game plan and the defense made Dylan Raoila look like, well, himself.
AlmaOtter: I didn't watch a second of this one. Admittedly, I was pretty sure that we would get launched into the goddamn stratosphere by the Ducks, but that wasn't why I didn't see this game.
OhioOtter and I were lucky enough to accompany our godkids (and her best friend from childhood and my buddy from grad school, who just so happen to be our godkids' parents) to a pumpkin patch in the hinterlands outside of Northern Virginia.
Illinois won. The kids picked pumpkins and fed baby goats. My buddy and I had some pretty fantastic hoppy brown ales at a brewery overlooking the Virginia foothills. And to top it all off, Iowa, Michigan, and Clemson all lost. What could be a better day in late October than that?
thumpasaurus: How in the hell did Oregon turn 426 yards of offense into 10 points? Well, their horrendous third down conversion rate helped. Apparently whoever our defensive coordinator is now is working backwards on downs and 3rd is where he's best. Tack on a couple of explosive plays and you had a recipe for not only a victory, but a late lead I felt safe with thanks to the secret ingredient that was Dylan Raiola. What an abysmal performance in the second half! Considering they were getting something like 6 yards a carry on the ground I have no idea why they threw 41 times. The Berting Illini are now 8-2 coming off a bye. We still have some fight left in this coaching staff.
The Detroit Dream is still alive
also…once more with feeling:
KICK LANNING KICK
Iowa beats Minnesota 13-10. Wait, Minnesota beats Iowa 13-10?
Holy hell it finally happened! Minnesota Iowa'd Iowa. P.J.'s wet dream of doing not a goddamned thing more than the absolute minimum finally worked against the kind of doing not a goddamned thing more than the bare minimum! No, 2023 doesn't count because that wasn't a fair catch.
WhiteSpeedReceiver:
Mr. Grizz: This was the dumbest game I have seen since, I'm still thinking. Iowa had three interceptions, four fumbles and one lost, and a blocked punt deep in its territory. It had drive-killing dumb penalties. It lost Moulton. And with three minutes left, somehow it was a tie ball game.
Both teams had chances in that time span. Each played like they were playing for overtime the first two downs. Iowa's third down pass play failed, Minnesota's third down pass play put them in position for the win.
Iowa actually had one more fumble lost but the play didn't count. Minnesota, unable to line up 5 guys in a straight line on the line of scrimmage, and not even close, punted a bad line drive which was returned about 20 yards, fumbled about 15 more downfield and recovered by Minnesota, and none of it counted. Yakety Sax played in the background.
Minnesota has outplayed Iowa in the past and still lost. This time, despite some effort, they could not give the game away..
The one thing Iowa teams consistently have is discipline. The group in Iowa uniforms did not resemble an Iowa team.
He was a high school quarterback but isn't anymore: Illinois won. iowa lost. I got out of work in time to see Trampled By Turtles tonight. Life is good.
Biff: Was it good football? No. Was it objectively fun to watch? Also no. Did either team truly feel in control at any point? God no.
And none of that matters because Minnesota has Floyd of Rosedale and my 6 year old now thinks that winning trophies are just a normal part of Gopher fanhood. Minnesota possesses four rivalry trophies at the same time for the second time ever (2014 is the other) and The Jug, Axe, and Floyd together for the first time since 1978 when they had them all for precisely two weeks.
Now Minnesota is not a great team; I haven't forgotten about Purdue and Mississippi State. And I have to assume that a neutral watching this game would have had a similar (potentially more enjoyable) experience by going to a rock fight between two intoxicated apes. But that's not my problem today. The Gophers managed to string together just enough clock-chewing drives to get the job done, and Iowa simply could not stop turning the ball over in the air, on the ground, and even on special teams. That wasn't entirely their fault though, the Minnesota defense had something to do with it.
There are some moments from this game that are going to stick with me for a while. Maverick Baranowski wrestling a fumble away like Kent Hrbek successfully getting Ron Gant out. TJ Bush Jr’s interception at the line where the ball seemed to magically teleport into his hands. Minnesota’s opening drive to start the second half which literally more than doubled their offensive output to that point. And of course the game winning field goal that would have been good from 55-60 yards. The single Iowa fan next to our group who made precisely one sound the entire game (when they tied) and then vanished into thin air when Drake Lindsey hit Jalen Smith with a 39 yard pass with 39 seconds left (huh).
The final sequence that led to Minnesota having the ball with 1:39 left was wild. Emotions swung widely from excitement to despair to hope to shock and back again. There have been some exceedingly dumb sequences in this rivalry over the years but very few of them have fallen to the Gophers benefit in my time. This is fun we're having fun.
End of the day the Gophers have beaten 3 ranked teams and sit at 5-2. My 7-5 prediction for the season still seems likely but this is not at all how I expected to get there. I'll take it. The Washington, Michigan, and Iowa games have given me incredible memories with my friends, wife, and son that I wouldn't trade for anything, including looking respectable at Purdue.
I would like to know what it's like to have all 5 rivalry trophies at once even though I still think the Governor’s Victory Bell is kinda fake. Lots of work to do though, and I probably shouldn't be putting that thought in writing but here we are.
For now I’m going to savor the flavor. Floyd is back and he's Jack Daniels drunk.
WhiteSpeedReceiver: That was infuriating. I’m not even sure how to describe it other than “A B1G West Classic.”
Minnesota did its damnedest to get Iowa’d again, and then remembered that we also “like” playing Iowaball and did just enough to win a game they probably shouldn't have. Kirk Ferentz should probably be proud of us, since imitation is the finest form of flattery.
Also, it just dawned on me that Minnesota has won the most recent matchups against Iowa in football, men's basketball, women's basketball, and wrestling. The world may be awful, but there's still some beauty left in it.
Fitzy fails to drag UCLA through the mud
And Penn State fans everywhere pretend Bob Chesney is the new Curt Cignetti and UCLA's record is not a byproduct of an even easier schedule and an Oregon team en route to a 2025 Penn State redux.
ardichoke: If you're gonna be bad, at least be interesting. Sadly, MSU is not. This team is putrid, and has an injury problem that is even worse than the typically high Sparty injury rate. Are they putting something in the water on campus that makes them extra injury prone or something?
3rd string starting QB Kayd Coffman left the game in the 3rd quarter with a QBR of 2.2. That seems bad. Playing quarterback for MSU has to feel like you're getting hit by a golf cart repeatedly every Saturday. Defenses spend more time in the backfield than Sparty running backs. MSU had 70 yards of offense in the 1st quarter and didn't add another 70 to that until desperation time late into the 4th quarter. I'm pretty sure this team, at this point in the season, would actually lose to their early season MACrifices.
Okay, I'm done being negative about my team, it's time to be negative about someone else instead. UCLA fans, your team is ranked in the top-10, undefeated, and facing an opponent who they are certainly going to manhandle... yet your stadium looks like it is barely half full. Someone please remind me again why we were so gung-ho to expand this traditionally midwest conference with these guys. The official attendance number was 33,757. That's pathetic. Attendance to watch the pathetic dumpster fire that is MSU in East Lansing last week was 67,423. Can we please send these west coast teams back to the Pac-12 and reset the timeline to when college football was kinda fun?
Wisconsin 24, USC 7
So that's how defense is supposed to work, huh.
Kind of...: Wisconsin's near elite front seven absolutely stuffed USC's running game (a week after doing the same to UCLA). But this week, they managed a pass rush, too, and the secondary played better (funny how those two things go together), allowing the Badgers to post a really impressive win on a night where they threw for 58 yards (read the first paragraph again).
The world may not be ready for Wisconsin at Iowa next week.
MaximumSam: We thought the Big Ten West was dead. Instead, it burrowed underground to pupate before emerging and infecting all of college football.
Kind of...: Seriously. Read all the other recaps. We're a snarky, cynical bunch who are rarely happy with our own teams, but, again, read the recaps. This is CFB in the portal/NIL era. Nobody has depth. Everybody has major flaws. Continuity is rare. For a number of reasons, huge advantage defense. Which is to say: advantage B1G. Which is even more to say: advantage B1G West Rock Fights!!!
