A college campus would seem to be the last place where censorship would be allowed to flourish, but at Northwestern, self-preservation has replaced self-expression.
Coach Gary Barnett will not now, or ever, allow his team to look at film of Saturday’s 40-34 loss to Rice. It was deemed material inappropriate for a fragile audience.
Next up is the Big Ten schedule, and there are enough copies of it around Evanston for a public book-burning.
It doesn’t get any easier for the 2-2 Wildcats; in fact, it gets much harder. Purdue is up next, and even though the Boilermakers were considered one of the weaker teams in the conference before the season began, they already have beaten Notre Dame.
Barnett has spent the hours since the Rice loss trying to convince his team that that is actually good news. The Big Ten season is upon the Wildcats, meaning there is something to play for now. What went before, the losses to Wake Forest and Rice and the near-loss to Duke, were just what they looked like on the schedule: not much of an adrenaline rush.
There was, however, the pesky matter of Saturday’s defeat, which included 539 yards of total offense by the Owls, who proved to the Wildcats that they see well during the day too. Rice runs an option offense, and it is for that reason that Barnett decided to lock up tape of the game. What happened at Ryan Field will have to live in their memory, and Barnett would like that expunged as well.
“I’ve got to shoulder a lot of that, the way the defense played,” he said Monday. “I probably forced our coaches to run a defense that forced our players to play a little less aggressively than what our nature is. I probably asked us to do some things that we just don’t do very well.”
In particular, Barnett said he managed to air Casey Dailey’s tires by asking the defensive end to wait before he reacted to the quarterback. Dailey, Northwestern’s best big-play man, was left without a big play, and Rice quarterback Chad Nelson rushed for 178 yards.
Now comes Purdue, which will use four or five receivers at a time. New coach Joe Tiller has an offense as wide open as Wyoming, where he came from. Northwestern’s Faraji Leary, who has played running back the first four games, will move to defensive back to add more bodies against the air attack.
“It’s a strange deal when you play an offense like that and you turn around and play an offense like Purdue’s,” Barnett said. “We really have a night-and-day difference now.”
As odd as it might sound after the way the Wildcats struggled in their non-conference games, they are looking forward to the Big Ten schedule. It’s a bit like looking forward to kidney stones. But they are the two-time defending Big Ten champions, and until somebody takes it away, the title is still theirs.
“We don’t have to play a team like (Rice) again,” center Nathan Strikwerda said. “All the teams in the Big Ten are basically similar–run-oriented, with the exception of Purdue. We’re getting to more typical football that we’re more accustomed to playing. We don’t have to see them again, and we’re really grateful for that.”
Bring on the Ohio States, Penn States and Iowas.
Wildcats files: Barnett seems to have settled on Tim Hughes as his quarterback for the rest of the season. Hughes completed 15 of 25 passes for 272 yards and two touchdowns and played his best game of the season. Chris Hamdorf took just three snaps in the game. “I really do feel we can win with Tim,” Barnett said. “Tim can make the plays for us right now.”
