Tag: Northwestern Wildcats

College Football News Preview 2020: Northwestern Wildcats

College Football News Preview 2020: Previewing, predicting, and looking ahead to the Northwestern Wildcats season with what you need to know.

College Football News Preview 2020: Previewing, predicting, and looking ahead to the Northwestern Wildcats season with what you need to know.

– Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak

– What You Need To Know: Offense | Defense
– Top Players | Key Players, Games, Stats
– What Will Happen, Win Total Prediction
– Schedule Analysis
– Northwestern Previews 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015

2019 Record: 3-9 overall, 1-8 in Big Ten
Head Coach: Pat Fitzgerald, 15th year, 99-79
2019 CFN Final Opinion Ranking: 95
2019 CFN Final Season Formula Ranking: 110
2019 CFN Preview Ranking: 47

No one knows what’s going to happen to the 2020 college football season. We’ll take a general look at where each team stands – doing it without spring ball to go by – while crossing our fingers that we’ll all have some well-deserved fun this fall. Hoping you and yours are safe and healthy.

5. College Football News Preview 2020: Northwestern Wildcats Offense 3 Things To Know

– It was one of the strangest disasters of the entire 2020 college football season on a national scale. The Northwestern offense, really, really didn’t work, averaging just 297 yards and 16 points per game, scoring 15 points or fewer seven times.

New offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian comes in from Boston College where he was Steve Addazio’s guy for a year, but he has NFL coaching experience. He has a ton of work to do.

The passing game was the least-efficient in the nation, averaging just nine yards per completion with six touchdown passes and 15 picks, averaging a mere 4.5 yards per throw. Clemson transfer Hunter Johnson was ineffective, and hurt. Aidan Smith was ineffective, and hurt. In all, the four quarterbacks thrown into the mix couldn’t get anything going, but junior Andrew Marty was able to lead the way to a win over Illinois to close things out.

Johnson is still the most talented prospect on the roster – he was a huge get for Clemson until that Trevor Lawrence guy showed up – but on the way is Peyton Ramsey, a transfer from Indiana who led the team with 2,454 yards and 13 touchdowns with five picks with seven rushing scores. However, when Michael Penix is healthy, he’s IU’s guy – and now Ramsey might be Northwestern’s guy.

CFN in 60 Video: Northwestern Wildcats Preview
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– Bennett Skowronek took off for Notre Dame, but overall the other top seven wideouts are back. the pieces are there to get this thing going again. The receiving corps didn’t get any help from the spotty quarterback play, but there’s experience returning.

Senior Riley Lees came up with a breakout season with 51 catches for 430 yards and two touchdowns, and that was it. The No. 2 target – senior Ramaud Chiaokhiao-Bowman – only caught 17 passes for 188 yards.

– For all of the issues on offense, the line wasn’t all that bad. The ground game was decent, the pass protection wasn’t miserable, and the group was decent enough to consider it a plus going into the season with four starters back.

Drake Anderson was a relative positive, leading the team in rushing in his freshman season with 634 yards and three scores, and Evan Hull led the way scored four times and was second on the team with just 286 yards. Throw in the return of Isaiah Bowser – 2018’s leading rusher with 866 yards and six scores, but got hurt last year – and the backfield is set.

NEXT: College Football News Preview 2020: Northwestern Wildcats Defense 3 Things To Know

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Northwestern 2020 Preview: CFN in 60

Northwestern Wildcats 2020 Preview: Previewing, predicting, and looking ahead with what you need to know.

Photo Credit: Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

Northwestern Wildcats 2020 Preview: Previewing, predicting, and looking ahead with what you need to know.

Photo Credit: Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

Northwestern 2020 Preview: CFN in 60

Northwestern Wildcats 2020 Preview: Previewing, predicting, and looking ahead with what you need to know.

Photo Credit: Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

Northwestern Wildcats 2020 Preview: Previewing, predicting, and looking ahead with what you need to know.

Photo Credit: Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

Which teams has Texas never beat that they have history with?

Which college teams has Texas played but never defeated? There are seven total and we dive into each one that has evaded a Texas win.

The Texas Longhorns football program is one of the more storied in all of college football history. The beginning of the program dates all the way back to 1893 and they are one of seven programs with over 900 wins. Well, 916 to be exact.

In fact the Texas Longhorns are tied with Alabama for the third most wins in college football history. A team the Longhorns hold a winning record against going 7-1-1 in nine meetings. Those two teams will meet up for a home-and-home series in 2022 and 2023. Two schools that have a combined 1,832 wins and 21 national championships.

Despite having 916 wins all-time, there are still a handful of teams that the Longhorns have played and never beaten. Using Winsipedia, we compiled the list of teams that the Longhorns haven’t beaten in their 126-year history. We start with three teams from the ACC.

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Northwestern makes Wisconsin look good in many ways

Northwestern magnifies Wisconsin

The Northwestern Wildcats are likely to make the Wisconsin Badgers look good on Wednesday night when the two teams meet on Senior Night in the Kohl Center. Northwestern and Nebraska have resided in the basement of the Big Ten all season long. They played an ugly game this past Sunday, and Northwestern won it only because Nebraska was an improbably awful 8 of 30 from the free throw line.

Yes: 8 of 30. On free throws. That’s how Northwestern won its only Big Ten road game of the season. The Wildcats have been a bad team this season. They haven’t had a good team in any of the past three seasons.

Wait a minute: Isn’t this the same program which made the 2017 NCAA Tournament and won an NCAA Tournament game? Didn’t Northwestern, under Chris Collins, make history by reaching its first NCAA Tournament and winning its first game in the Big Dance? Wasn’t all of this supposed to ignite the program and lead to vastly improved recruiting of the Chicago pipeline? Wasn’t this supposed to make Northwestern — which renovated Welsh-Ryan Arena — a hot new place for recruits to play college basketball? Wasn’t Northwestern’s breakthrough supposed to lead to a new era of prosperity?

Not only has this NOT happened; it hasn’t even come close to happening. Chris Collins owns a piece of college basketball immortality as the man who finally led Northwestern to the promised land after 78 seasons without an NCAA Tournament, but he has been a bad coach with no answers in the three years since that seminal achievement. The face-plant of Northwestern basketball makes that 2017 joyride — as great as it was — seem like a notable aberration, not the product of anything sustainable or enduring.

Wisconsin basketball doesn’t know what this feels like.

The Badgers were once in Northwestern’s shoes, with 47 straight years without an NCAA Tournament appearance. Sure, 47 isn’t 78, but that is still a very, very long time. Wisconsin walked in the wilderness, and when the Badgers finally began to make the NCAA Tournament again in the 1990s, did anyone seriously think UW would make the Big Dance on an annual basis, churning out solid if not spectacular teams with great consistency?

Northwestern had one moment in one season at one point in time.

Wisconsin has had multiple decades of reliable production and performance, with only one missed NCAA Tournament in the past 21 years.

Northwestern will probably make Wisconsin look good on Wednesday night. Northwestern already makes UW look good on a much larger historical scale.

Wisconsin recruiting comparison: Northwestern

More on Wisconsin football recruiting in the Big Ten

National Signing Day has come and gone and the Wisconsin Badgers have put together a fairly decent class compared to the rest of the Big Ten. In the spirit of looking at recruiting classes compared to the rest of the conference, Badgers Wire is taking a look at Wisconsin’s class on a national level and a conference level. We’ll be including their national rankings and their conference rankings. Next up on our list is a program that has been rather steady under the stewardship of its longtime coach Pat Fitzgerald. We’ll be looking at Northwestern. 

The Northwestern Wildcats are coming off Fitzgerald’s worst season as a head coach since taking over the program. The Wildcats were 3-9 in 2019 with a 1-8 record against Big Ten opponents. The closest the Wildcats have come to this record under Fitz was in his first season, when Northwestern finished 4-8 overall and 2-6 in the conference. What is especially stunning about the 2019 disaster is the fact that the Wildcats were 9-5 in 2018 and 8-1 in B1G play, winning their first Big Ten West Division championship. The 2019 campaign was a jarring season all the way around, and it was the Cats’ first losing season since 2014.

The Wildcats have the nation’s 47th-ranked recruiting class in 2020. They finished with the Big Ten’s No. 11 recruiting class with a player average rating of .8650. Their best player is center Peter Skoronski. At 6-foot-4, 275 pounds, Skoronski (.9503) is the No. 3 player in Illinois and the 3rd-best center in the class of 2020. The Badgers (.8782) have a higher per-recruit average than the Wildcats (.8650). The Badgers’ best player in 247’s composite rankings is offensive tackle Trey Wedig (.9643). The 6-foot-8, 320-pound behemoth is ranked (.0140) higher than Skoronski for the Wildcats. 

The position where both classes compare: outside linebacker. The Badgers signed Cole Dakovich (.8755), a 6-foot-5, 220-pound player out of Catholic Memorial in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He’s the No. 34 player at his position in the nation and the third-best player coming out of Wisconsin. The Spartans signed Cullen Coleman. At 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, Coleman (.8756) is the nation’s 33rd-best outside linebacker, and he’s the 4th-best player in New York. Both players are likely to sit and learn with veteran players ahead of them, but Coleman plans to come in and compete for a starting position. 

Northwestern is a bad team, but it will affect the Big Ten race

Northwestern and the Big Ten race

Remember when Northwestern basketball was decent — not NCAA Tournament-level good, but NIT-level good? Merely being an NIT team would seem like paradise for Northwestern right now, given how far (and how quickly) the Wildcats have fallen since making their first-ever NCAA Tournament in 2017. Northwestern is 1-15 in the Big Ten, 6-20 overall, and is immersed in an 11-game losing streak. The Wildcats and the Nebraska Cornhuskers have both been buried at the bottom of the Big Ten throughout the season. They have become the two teams everyone in the Big Ten wants to play… which leads us to the point of this article:

Northwestern, as bad as it is and as off-the-radar as it has been this season, will play a role in shaping the Big Ten race for three double byes at the conference tournament in a few weeks. The Wildcats might not win any of the games they play, but their remaining schedule is one of several plot points in the five-way race for the second, third, and fourth seeds at the Big Ten Tournament.

The five Big Ten teams tied for second place at 10-6 in the conference are Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan State, Penn State, and Iowa. Of those five teams, none play Nebraska, so that’s an easy win opportunity none of those teams have in the next two weeks. This leaves Northwestern as the team everyone wants to have on the schedule.

As it turns out, three of the five Big Ten teams tied for second have the Wildcats on their remaining slate: Wisconsin is one, which is why the Badgers have to like their path to a double bye. Illinois and Penn State are the other teams which have Northwestern on their schedule. Iowa and Michigan State have the objectively harder paths to a double bye.

Northwestern will try to play spoiler in the coming weeks. Whether the Wildcats can do so in a meaningful way is another matter. Nevertheless, the fact that three of the Big Ten teams tied for second play Northwestern in the coming weeks — while two don’t — certainly stands out as a good reason to favor some teams over others in the race for a Big Ten Tournament double bye.

Ohio State wrestling wins season home finale against No. 8 Northwestern

The Ohio State wrestling team beat Northwestern 28-10 in a dual-meet to close out the home regular season and send the seniors out in style.

The Ohio State wrestling team finished up the home dual-meet slate on Sunday in winning fashion, beating No. 8 Northwestern 28-10. The Buckeyes took seven of ten matches and were really in no danger of dropping the matchup with the Wildcats.

Being that it was the last home meet, it was also senior day for captains Kollin Moore and Luke Pletcher. They did not disappoint and won both of their matchups to help send themselves out with a win to cap their careers in Columbus.

OSU got bonus points from Fritz Schierl (pin) at 174 lbs., Rocky Jordan (major decision) at 184 lbs., Gary Trabu (major decision) at heavyweight, Jordan Decatur (major decision) at 133 lbs., and Luke Pletcher (major decision) at 141 lbs. All three of Ohio State’s No. 1 ranked wrestlers were victorious.

Ohio State will now head to Happy Valley to take on the No. 2 ranked Penn State Nittany Lions to close out the dual-meet season. From there, it’s on to the Big Ten Championships and NCAAs.

 

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WATCH: Ohio State guard D.J. Carton throws down ridiculous alley-oop

Ohio State guard D.J. Carton knows how to get off the ground. Watch a ridiculous alley-oop he got to go against Northwestern Sunday.

If you’ve watched Ohio State basketball this year, you’ve no doubt seen flashes of the high-flying athleticism of freshman guard D.J. Carton. He’s only 6-2, 185 lbs., but he can fly above the rim like a guy 6-7 or taller. He was blessed with fast-twitch ability some of us can only dream about.

That skill set was on full display in the second half against on the road against Northwestern Sunday night. With the game still in doubt, the Buckeyes grabbed a rebound, threw an outlet pass to Duane Washington and raced down the floor. Washington lobbed a pass up to Carton but appeared to sail it too high.

That’s when Carton reached back, cradled the basketball, and with his body and head behind the rim, found a way to get the basket to go down. In case you missed it, you too can appreciate the beauty of it all by clicking on the below highlight from the Twitter feed of Ohio State on BTN.

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Mighty impressive. Man if this kid ever completely figures things out, he’s going to be a handful for opposing teams.

 

Ohio State with much needed win over Northwestern. Three things we learned.

Ohio State battled through a back and forth game against Northwestern for its first Big Ten road win of the year.

Ohio State finally got a road win in the Big Ten, and it’s a big one. Heck, at this point, any win is big when you’re mired in a slump of losing six of seven.

The Buckeyes got a slow start to the game but began to turn up the pressure in the first half and went into the break with a three-point lead. Unlike last time out at home against Minnesota though, Ohio State was able to play a full forty minutes and finish this one with a solid 71-59 win.

Who knows? Maybe this will act as a catalyst towards a turnaround on the season.

We always like to take stock in these sorts of things, and so as normal, here’s three things we learned after the victory.

Next … Andre Wesson kept Ohio State in the game early

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