Illinois vs. Arizona State football: 2011 and other topics

Workout notes Easy 10K walk (two loops of Cornstalk) in 1:25. It was a bit slippery from drizzle.

College Football
(photos from yahoo)

I admitted that this was the most I’ve enjoyed a live football game in a long time. Illinois beat Arizona State 17-14 in a slugfest. The teams traded drives to get to 7-7 in the first quarter; Illinois made their second quarter field goal and Arizona State missed theirs; that turned out to be the difference.

Basically, the Sun Devils moved the ball reasonably well between the 30′s but had trouble finishing drives. The Illinois defense played lights out and sacked the Sun Devil quarterback repeatedly (6 times) and came up with fumbles/interceptions. They also, for the most part, took away the running game. They moved the ball just enough to take advantage of Arizona State miscues.

Neither team is top 10 material, but my guess is that both will play a bowl game.

Note: if Illinois overlooks Western Michigan (next week’s opponent) they do so at their peril.

The crowd was really into it; this was the best atmosphere I’ve witnessed in this stadium in a while.

Football WTF???
When I left to go to this game (90 minutes away), Pitt was dominating Iowa and up 27-10 in the 4′th quarter.

The Hawkeyes rallied to win 31-27??? I admit that Iowa looked deader than a doornail when I left.

But this wasn’t the biggest rally…

Houston trailed Louisiana Tech 34-7 in the 3′rd quarter; they rally to win 35-34.

This wasn’t the strangest game though.

Oklahoma State played at Tulsa and the game was scheduled to start at 9:15 central time. There was a lighting delay and the game didn’t start until after midnight!

Astonishingly there were still fans at the game; oh yes, Oklahoma State won 59-33.

Famous Last Words
When Texas beat BYU 17-16, I said that I thought that BYU has a big, physical team that would win a lot of games. They got blown out at home 54-10 by Utah. I don’t understand that.

I didn’t see Navy’s 24-21 loss at South Carolina.

It was a heart breaker for Navy, but a good performance nevertheless.

In other action, ND played well (for a change) to whip Michigan State 31-13, and UT cruised past a bad UCLA team 49-20.

Advertisement