CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) – For better than three quarters Saturday, Dan Persa’s return was all Northwestern had hoped it would be.
The senior quarterback had four touchdown passes, and the Wildcats had a 28-10 lead on No. 24 Illinois.
Illini quarterback Nathan Scheelhaase, though, refused to follow that script, engineering a late comeback that delivered a dramatic win for Illinois, 38-35.
Scheelhaase threw for 391 yards and led the Illini on three scoring drives that put Illinois up 31-28 late in the fourth quarter. Then, after Wildcat running back Jacob Schmidt reclaimed with a late TD, the Illini quarterback did it again, plunging into the end zone for the winning TD with 13 seconds to play.
“Shocked,” Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald said, describing his reaction to his team’s collapse. “(Illinois did) nothing that we didn’t work on and nothing that we didn’t prepare for, which is probably the most disappointing aspect of the whole day.”
And Persa, after a fourth-quarter hit apparently aggravated the Achilles tendon tear that kept him out since last November, took himself out of the game.
“I told my coach it was starting to stiffen up and, in the past, that’s when steps back have happened, so it was my decision,” the senior quarterback said in the Wildcats locker room, adding that he felt fine after the game.
Wildcats tailback Mike Trumpy, who led Northwestern with 47 yards on eight carries, also left the game early, carted off with a knee injury. It wasn’t immediately clear how serious it was.
Scheelhaase overcame a first half in which he threw an interception in the Wildcats end zone and pitched another ball away for a fumble that set up a Northwestern TD. And he had to engineer not one but two second-half comebacks.
The first brought the Illini back from the 18-point deficit. It was Illinois’ biggest deficit of the season and largely the work of Persa.
The second Illinois comeback started with just over a minute to play, and delivered the unlikely win.
With Persa on the bench and Kain Colter at quarterback, the Wildcats scored a go-ahead touchdown that made it 35-31 with 1:15 to play. They converted after Tyler Scott recovered Jason Ford’s fumble at the Illinois 36. Schmidt’s 6-yard run capped the drive.
But Scheelhaase went to work and, as he’d done much of the second half, started looking for Jenkins. He found the wide receiver on a 28-yard completion that moved the ball to the Wildcats 41. Then the quarterback took off on his own, for 22 yards. An interference call on Wildcats cornerback Jeravin Matthews moved the ball to the 4 and, on third and goal, Scheelhaase bulled his way in.
“We kept believing,” said Scheelhaase, whose team stayed undefeated at 5-0 (1-0 Big Ten). “We talked about that all week – just believing in us as an offense, just believing in the defense, believing in what this team’s all about, and that’s what we did throughout the game.”
Scheelhaase threw for a career-high 391 yards and three touchdowns – all to Jenkins, who now has 40 catches on the season for 633 yards. That’s just 113 yards short of his total for last season, when he was Illinois’ top receiver.
The Illini couldn’t run the ball. Averaging 241.8 yards a game before Saturday, Illinois had just 32 yards at halftime and finished with 82.
“They were going to try and not let us run the ball,” offensive coordinator Paul Petrino said. “Going into the game, we thought we had to throw deep.”
Illinois also had five first-half penalties, including a questionable offensive pass interference call on Spencer Harris that wiped out his diving touchdown catch late in the second quarter.
Earlier, Scheelhaase threw a pass up for grabs from the Wildcats 4 that was hauled in on one hand by safety Brian Peters. Later, Scheelhaase tried to pitch the ball to Troy Pollard, but the back never seemed to see it and Northwestern jumped on it, setting up one of Persa’s TD passes.
Persa finished with a modest 10 of 14 for 123 yards but he did have the four touchdown passes.
“It’s fun seeing him back there and having No. 7 out there with you,” wide receiver Jeremy Ebert said.
Ebert, Persa’s roommate, had five catches for 68 yards and three touchdowns.
Persa left his mark in the game with the touchdowns, and with savvy.
With a fourth-and-5 from the Illinois 34 and his receivers covered, the quarterback scrambled straight back to his own 48 and waited, finally seeing Schmidt pop open on his right. Persa flung the ball toward Schmidt, who brought it down and ran for a first down at the Illini 23.
Later, Persa found Ebert in the left corner of the end zone for an 11-yard TD pass and the 28-10 lead.
Add A Comment