NU 49, MSU 14

Whee! What a fun game to watch. I always like a little of the Brett Basanez show to wake me up on a Saturday morning. As added bonus this week, there was a teaser for the Cats' defense that looked pretty promising. The defensive line and linebackers showed a little more of what we had at times last year, and the secondary stepped up to prevent big MSU plays and make some of their own. Nice.

Kryptonian coach Jon-El Smith should not be too mad at his team. There was no expectation that they could stop the ApostroCats' offensive might. The offense was plagued by turnovers, but for the most part they were not - to borrow a phrase from Smith - "country mistakes." Ok. He never really said that, but it's way funnier than "coaching mistakes."

Here's looking forward to homecoming this weekend and a chance to make up for a couple bad losses in a row to Michigan.

More after the jump.

Josh's StatWatch vs. Coach Walker's StatWatch
Josh - NU Passing yards/attempt: 11.0 yds/att (better than 6.5 = good)
Walker - NU Turnover margin: 4-1 = +3 (positive = good)

Standings after Game 7: The goal here is to see which of our benchmarks is a better predictor of wins.
Josh: 5 (7-0 predicting individual outcomes)
Randy: 4 (3-1 predicting individual outcomes, 0 turnover margin is not a predictor)
NU Record: 5-2

And
In My Opinion:
Cats' O: Only his supernatural ability to beat Illinois allowed M-Rob swipe a 3rd consecutive Big Ten weekly honor from Baz's clutches.
Cats' D: Those goalline picks were obviously key. It's very nice that Henderson can do more than just thwack people.
Cats' Special Teams: Had little to do. No miscues is all you can ask for when we don't attempt a FG and each team only punts thrice.

Let's go Cats!