Posts tagged Juice Williams at FanHouse

Although Juice Williams was able to pass for over 450 yards and rush for 41, Minnesota was able to keep Illinois out of the end zone for three quarters and build a 14-6 lead. Actually, Minnesota took a 20-6 lead at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Then Illinois came storming back with two touchdown drives in the fourth quarter. Sandwiched in between those two touchdowns, Minnesota sacked Juice Williams at the Illini nine yard line resulting in a fumble that was returned by Simoni Lawrence for a touchdown.

That was the game winner that gave Minnesota a 27-20 lead and a 6-1 record. Yup, I just said that. Minnesota, a team that went 1-11 last year is one loss out of the Big 10 lead. With Penn State not on the schedule, and four out of their last five games against teams with worse records, Minnesota could actually be in position to via for a Big 10 title. No, seriously! With home games remaining against Northwestern, Michigan, and Iowa and road games against Purdue and Wisconsin it is entirely possible that Minnesota could run the table. Crazier things have happened.

Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten breaks down action across the conference.

RIGHT: Let's face it, this is what everybody's talking about in the Big Ten this week.

We're now two weeks into the conference season and already things are starting to sort themselves out. It's clear that Penn State and Ohio State are going to duke it out for the conference title and a Rose Bowl berth, unless Penn State wins out and gets some help from the Big XII and SEC. It's clear that Illinois, Michigan State, and (probably) Northwestern constitute the conference's second tier. Just below them, put Minnesota (gadzooks, how long has it been since you could put the Gophers ahead of anybody in this conference?) and ... yeesh. Is Minnesota all alone in the third tier?

That leaves us with five teams who right now are fighting for one bowl slot, unless two Big Ten teams wind up in the BCS. Early estimates would favor Wisconsin, though it's starting to look like the Badgers may have been overhyped. (I'll save you the trouble, SEC fan: "All teams in the Big Ten are overhyped!" Oh, look, none of your teams have beaten Vanderbilt!)

Iowa is a strange case, as usual. The Hawkeyes have been more unlucky than awful in their three-game skid, but there aren't any easy games left, except maybe this week. Purdue, Indiana, and Michigan? Stink, stank, and stunk.

A lot of things went wrong for the Fighting Illini on Saturday night in St. Louis. First off, they couldn't stop the Missouri offense to save their lives, giving up 549 total yards, and allowing 52 points. If the Tigers didn't score on a drive, it wasn't because the Illini defense stopped them, but because Mizzou stopped itself and failed to execute (with the exception of Derek Walker's 34-yard interception return for a score).

Of course, had somebody told the defense before the game that they weren't playing two-hand touch, it might have helped matters.

Then there was the special teams which struggled in covering kicks and punts last season rearing it's ugly head again. After the Illini took a 13-10 lead on Walker's interception and stole all the momentum, they gave it right back as Jeremy Maclin returned the ensuing kick 99 yards for a score and sent Mizzou on a run of 21 unanswered points before the half.

Still, not all was lost for the Illini last night. It appears that all the offseason talk of Juice Williams' further development as a quarterback wasn't unwarranted. Williams had the night of his life in St. Louis. After getting off to a shaky start throwing bullets that made Brett Favre blush, Williams settled down and started passing instead of just throwing the ball as hard as he possibly could.

The results? A career high 451 yards through the air, and a career high five touchdown while completing 62% of his passes. To put some perspective on those numbers, Juice didn't surpass 451 yards passing until Illinois' fifth game of the season last year, and he didn't throw his fifth touchdown until November 3rd.

Now Juice isn't going to put up numbers like this all season, but if he can give the Illini half that production throughout the rest of the season, the Illini offense will turn out to be one of the most potent in the Big Ten (yes, I realize that's kind of like winning a Tallest Midget Award).

1. James Laurinaitis, LB, THE Ohio State University: I hope Laurinaitis is ready for the backlash, because after we all decide we're sick of being sick of hearing about T** T***w, Laurinaitis is probably next on our scorn list. Pity. In a league that always has a sampler platter of great linebackers, Laurinaitis is a standout among the standouts, and there isn't much left for him to accomplish. He already has a Nagurski Award and a Butkus Award to go along with more conference-based awards than just about any defensive player ever. So, yeah, he's pretty good, even if we're all going to be sick of hearing Brent Musberger talk about him by, say, late September. Or at least we would be, if not for all the time Musberger is sure to spend talking about ...

2. Beanie Wells, RB, THE Ohio State University: This guy must be part cyborg. At 6'1" and somewhere in the 230s, he's just another prototypical Buckeye running back. You know the type. Big, not overly flashy, and about as easy to tackle as a 40-foot oak tree. Wells, however, has that magical 6th gear, the one that changes the sound of his motor from "vroooooom" to "Oh no you don't!" Wells is on every Heisman watch list out there; if anybody can knock off T** T***w, here he is.

The Fighting Illini were quite the surprise in college football last season, going 9-4 overall and 6-2 in the Big Ten a year after finishing 2-10. The quick turnaround in Champaign resulted in the first Rose Bowl berth for the Illini since 1983, and the team celebrated by getting their butts kicked 49-17 by USC.

Still, despite the embarrassment handed them by the Trojans, the 2007 season can't be considered anything less than a raging success at Illinois.

The question is, will the Illini be able to carry that success into the 2008 season? History suggests they won't as they've generally followed every winning season with a losing season in Champaign, but that was before the recruiting machine that is Ron Zook came to town.

So will the Illini continue their climb to becoming a Big Ten powerhouse, or will they return to the back of the pack?

Curtis Painter is mediocre

Ah, mediocre football. The annual rite of late summer where fans of middling programs congregate and tell each other things like "if our offensive line is solid then I don't see why we can't go to a New Year's Day Bowl." Soon, of course, love and hopes are, well, amended.

By "amended," of course, we mean "discarded in favor of bloodthirsty savages on sports talk radio complaining about the coordinators and accusing the team of not wanting to win." It's a strange reaction to a 7- or 8-win season, of course, one that ends up in a warm climate in late December (grisly exception: Motor City Bowl, war-torn Bosnia Detroit). The fans never seem to get it: it could be so, so much worse. Look at Minnesota last season.

While Michigan, Ohio State, and (usually) Penn State represent the perennial powerhouse typification for the Big Ten, the conference usually hosts quite a few more mediocre programs. 2008 is no exception. Let's look at some of the programs that, let's be honest, don't stand a prayer of taking the Big Ten crown this season.

I already said earlier this week that Illinois running back Rashard Mendenhall would be skipping out on his senior season to enter the NFL draft, and now Rashard has gone and done something I haven't been able to do in 20 years or so.

He made me look smart.

Illinois junior running back Rashard Mendenhall will enter the NFL draft, a source close to him said Saturday.

Mendenhall, the Big Ten Player of the Year, made his final case as a pro prospect in the Rose Bowl, where he gained 155 yards rushing and added 59 receiving yards in the Fighting Illini's loss to Southern California.

Rashard's mother, Sibyl, says there's a press conference on Thursday at her son's old high school, Niles West.

While Mendenhall's absence is going to be a tough void to fill in Illinois' offense next season, Ron Zook actually sees his early departure as a good thing for the program.

Zook said he not only has no problem with [Rashard's departure], but also is looking forward to having more Illini leave Champaign early. Because that will mean Illinois is enjoying success as a team.

''We're going to get to a point in the program where we're going to have that issue. That's what you want. We have some other guys on this team that are going to have the opportunity possibly to do that.''

I have a feeling Ron may not feel the same way next season when he doesn't have Rashard around to bail Juice Williams out.

You would think that in a college football season that currently has Kansas ranked #2 in the BCS for a possible matchup with LSU, voters would start thinking outside the box. I mean, South Florida was ranked #2 earlier this season.

For the most part, I've been impressed by the AP voters and coaches for their willingness to adjust to the ever changing landscape of college football, but there's one team out there that still isn't getting any respect in my opinion.

The Fighting Illini are currently ranked 18th in both the AP and Coaches poll. It's my opinion, and one I used in my Blogpoll ballot, that the Illini are a top ten team right now.

Sure, they're 9-3 and nobody in the top ten has three losses, but I don't think losses are the end all be all of a team's ability. Oregon has only two losses, but without Dennis Dixon, are they a top 10 team? They sure didn't look like one against Arizona on Thursday night.

I know Hawaii is 10-0, but they're Hawaii. They needed a last second field goal to beat powerhouse Nevada on Friday night. I know the Illini are better than Hawaii, yet they're ranked three spots below them in the polls.

But let's take a look at what Ron Zook and his boys have done this season.

It's not exactly the most covered quarterback controversy in the country, in fact most didn't even realize there was one, but the Illini had a question to answer this week. After Juice Williams was knocked out of Illinois' season opening loss to Missouri, his backup Eddie McGee came in and played pretty well. Nearly leading the Illini to victory in the fourth quarter.

McGee's performance had many Illinois fans wondering if maybe Juice Williams was the right man for the job. McGee appeared to be more accurate, and could move just as well as Juice. The problem was McGee's Grossman-like tendency to commit turnovers at the worst times.

He had one fumble at the goal line that Missouri safety Pig Lewis returned 100 yards for a touchdown. Then, in the fourth quarter, as the Illini were driving to take the lead McGee threw a game ending interception.

All of which means that Juice Williams isn't going to lose his job.

"Juice got his eye dinged up, but he's fine,'' Zook said. "He had as good a practice (Monday) as he has all summer. There's no problem there.''

Zook said Williams will play Saturday against Western Illinois despite a solid effort by backup Eddie McGee against Missouri.

However, that doesn't mean that this possible controversy has been squashed.

They aren't the dregs but nor are they real threats to win the league. They could lose to Iowa State or a MAC team and I will watch their crappy December bowl games pulling for them to win just so everyone can finally shut up about how much the Big Ten suxxxx; I will usually be disappointed about the outcomes of these games. Ladies and gentlemen: the mediocre of the Big Ten. A veritable cornucopia of the average. A smörgåsbord of the typical. A vast array of another noun used to denote something sort of good and sort of bad.

THRILL to the sartorial stylings of Illinois linebackers

BOGGLE at just how Joe Tiller hasn't yanked his starting quarterback over and over the past few years

WONDER what is up with Iowa, anyway? Shouldn't they be better?

All of this... and more! After the jump.