Northwestern 21, Illinois 16

I'm way behind on this, but I figured it was still worth posting a recap considering this was the first game I actually attended in person this year.  Without any further ado, the stats:

In my preview, I predicted that the game would come down to the two teams' strengths: run offense and run defense.  But really, the match-up proved to be a wash.  The Illini outperformed the Wildcats on the ground by a good margin, but were a bit below their season rushing averages (.408 points/play, 47.8% success rate).  Illinois lost because they were simply decimated when Northwestern took to the air.  I was worried that QB Mike Kafka's accurate passing would be a bad match-up for the Illinois secondary and that is exactly what it was.  Illinois' soft coverages only work if they are able to generate a pass rush, but for the majority of the year, they haven't been able to, and Saturday's game was no exception.  Since I was actually at the game, I could better observe the Illinois secondary, and it wasn't pretty.  Northwestern receivers were open all game, and were able to run the same flag route to the outside corner over and over again for big gains.

As for the future of Ron Zook, I read somewhere (I think it was in this excellent book) that the minimum winning percentage a coach needs to stay afloat is .600, not .500.  This theory makes sense since although .500 is enough to make a bowl every year, a 6-6 record doesn't have much sex appeal.  .600, however, is 7.2 wins per year (in a 12-game schedule).  That puts you in a solid bowl every year and probably means there will be some very good seasons mixed in there as well.  Of course, Zook had a .622 winning percentage at Florida and got fired, but I'm talking about .600 as a minimum, and Florida has higher expectations than most programs.

Zook's winning percentage after 5 years at Illinois is .362, which is far below .600.  Even if you throw out his first two seasons as rebuilding years, his winning percentage is just .486. This means that Illinois would have to finish 4-8 and go 12-1 next year for Zook to reach the .600 mark - and that's excluding his first two seasons, where he was just 4-19!  I plan to conduct a more extensive analysis of Zook's tenure at the end of the season but suffice it to say, although I am somewhat sympathetic to the idea of giving him one more try, I'm not confident in his ability to lead the team back to a bowl next year.