Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: Western Illinois Preview
9/19/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
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MORE: Complete Game Notes and Preview
RUSH JOB: Solomon Vault, the true freshman running back, is the youngest of all the 'Cats. He is just 17 and still three weeks away from his next birthday. Justin Jackson, another freshman running back, is also a virtual neonate in the world of college football, and that is true too of superback Garrett Dickerson and defensive end Xavier Washington. Yet all are contributors to a team that Saturday will go after its first win of the season against Western Illinois.
The 'Cats, as has been well-documented, prepared for that game with a series of punishing practices, practices that were replete with up-downs if any one of them made an error. One aim here was to toughen them up, and another was to hone their collective focus. Then there was this. "We're trying to accelerate the growth and maturity of some of our guys who haven't played (a lot)," explained Pat Fitzgerald.
So does Vault feel older now than he did before those practices commenced?
He chuckles and then says, "I don't feel older. I feel more mature."
"Oh, man. My body hurts a lot. I feel like a fourth-year guy or something," Jackson says after himself chuckling at the same question.
But then, more serious, he continues, "It has really forced us to grow up. If you make a mistake and everyone sees that, then you don't do the up-downs. Everybody does them. So it makes you really be accountable for your mistakes and so you really have to focus and hone in on your craft and execute to the best of your ability."
SO SIMILAR, SO DIFFERENT: None of the newbies were overwhelmed by the physical demands of those punishing practices. "I've been in situations like this before, went through stuff like this," said Vault in a representative response. But each was, to at least some degree, informed and transformed by the experience.
"He had us do up-downs when we make a mistake, so you have to come ready, be focused every play," avowed Vault, explaining how it changed him. "As young people, we like to think about things other than football. But these last practices I learned you have to really be focused and held accountable. If you make a mistake, everybody pays for it as a team, it's not just yourself. That's what I learned this week."
"You realize it's now, we have to start producing now," added Jackson. "There's no time to wait. We don't have time to feel sorry for ourselves, and no one's feeling sorry for us. It's about us. It's about this team, and we've got to start improving ourselves."
"Without a doubt (I grew)," concluded Dickerson. "It's a long season. But we definitely got to get this train started. So we definitely had a sense of urgency in that we need to know that we can't be making mistakes, that we need to be held accountable for everything. That definitely helped us four -- myself, Justin, Solomon and Xavier -- kind of grow and realize we can't be out there making mistakes because it'll cost us."
THE MESSAGE TO ALL: Fitzgerald, in his last meeting with the press before Saturday's game, was asked about the up-downs. He joked that they were nothing new, that they're "in like Chapter 4 of Coaching 101."
Had he used them in practices before, he was then asked.
"I haven't had to," he said quickly, and now he was no longer joking. "Got to do what you got to do to find a way to win. Like I said for the last two weeks, I think anybody who ever put on the purple and white should be embarrassed by the way our team's played. The only way it's going to get fixed is if that group of guys in the locker room makes the decision to go out and do it in the 60 minutes of the game.
"It's not acceptable (the way the 'Cats have performed). We've raised the expectations of this program by toughness, by guys making plays. We haven't changed the offense, we haven't done any of that crap. We need some guys to make some plays. They'll do it one of two ways. They'll do it because they make the decision to trust themselves and go out and do it. Or they'll do it because they hate my guts. Either way, I don't care. I want to win football games and win them the Wildcat Way. Until we do that, we will continue to drive this group as hard as we possibly can. That's where we're going, and they'll either get on board or jump off the boat.
"So far, I've seen everybody get on board and when we say stroke, they're stroking as hard as they can. That's encouraging to see. I think that shows the toughness in the locker room. Now we've got to see it on Saturday."
QUICKLY NOTED:
• Western, 2-1 on the season, is an FCS school affiliated with the Missouri Valley Football Conference, which also includes Southern Illinois and Illinois State. Its loss came at Wisconsin, where it fell by 34 two weeks ago. But in that affair it trailed by only six at halftime and effectively shut down the Badgers' vaunted running game.
Consider this, for one example: In its four-point loss to SEC-power LSU, Wisconsin rushed for 268 yards; but it rushed for only 167 against the Fighting Leathernecks. And consider this, for another example: Against LSU, Wisconsin star Melvin Gordon rushed 16 times for 140 yards; but he rushed 17 times for only 38 yards against the Fighting Leathernecks. "They're going to do a really good job of stopping the run," Fitzgerald said, reflecting on that performance. "They went into Madison and put 13 guys in the box. I think they had two of their coaches out there fitting some gaps. There was no way they were going to let Wisconsin run the football. They did a great job and they do a terrific job schematically. We obviously have to be much better on offense to expect to win."
• Western's coached by Bob Nielson, who is in his second year at the school. He was previously at Minnesota-Duluth, where his teams were Division II national champs in 2008 and 2010.
• J.C. Baker, its diminutive (5-foot-8) senior running back, is averaging 109 rushing yards per game. Trenton Norvell, its 6-foot-5, 220 pound sophomore quarterback, has gone 48-of-71 (67.6 percent) for 633 yards and five touchdowns. Both operate behind an offensive line that goes 325, 290, 290, 300, 290. "A rather large offensive line, very similar to what we see in the Big Ten week in and week out," Fitzgerald said of it.
AND FINALLY: Western's nickname is The Fighting Leathernecks and its mascot is an English Bulldog, which are also the official nickname and mascot of the U.S. Marine Corps. It is the only public school in the United States that has permission through the Department of the Navy to use that military nickname, which it adopted in 1927. It did that in honor of Ray Hanson, who was a Marine colonel in World War I and was then its athletic director and the head coach of its football, basketball and baseball teams.
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