At 11 a.m. Saturday, the Illinois Fighting Illini take on the Minnesota Golden Gophers at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, IL. Minnesota is horrible this year with a record consisting of just 1 win and 9 losses. The one win that the Golden Gophers has is over Middle Tennessee, please don’t make me name who all of their losses came against. The Golden Gophers are quarterbacked by senior Adam Weber, whom the offense is definitely ran through. The team is not a great running team; they are actually the 90th rushing team in the nation. While they are only 52nd in the nation in passing, it is clear they lean towards throwing the ball since Weber averages about 230 yards per game. The team rushes about 100 yards per game.
The Fighting Illini are coming off a tough loss against the Michigan Wolverines. That game went into triple overtime so it was not a game to be ashamed of. The Illini defense is clearly ready to just eat up the Golden Gophers defense to make themselves feel better after giving up 67 points last week. The Illini are the 20th rushing team in the nation, doing really well there. The Illini defense is not ranked extremely high, but if you watch the games you know how they can play. Scheelhaase is going to have quite a game this week, I can already tell. He is playing more and more confident each game, which is soothing to watch since he will probably be around for 3 more years. Mikel Leshoure is obviously a beast of a running back so we don’t have to even talk about him and how he will just run over these Gophers.
This weekend at U of I is Dad’s Weekend. A lot of fathers will be at this game looking for a happy start to their Saturday. They will not be disappointed. The Illini are going to blow out the Gophers. With this win, the Illini will become bowl-eligible. The idea of the Illini is already pumping up students around campus, making them want to make the trip to wherever the Illini’s bowl game is. I will talk more about the bowl game when the time comes, but for this week Fighting Illini fans do not need to be worried about being disappointed like last week.
PREDICTION: Ilini-49, Golden Gophers-10
