Final Stats

By CHUCK SCHOFFNER
AP Sports Writer

IOWA CITY, Iowa - Fred Russell ran for two touchdowns while topping 1,000 yards for the season and Bob Sanders scored on a fumble return, lifting No. 13 Iowa to a 41-10 victory over Illinois on Saturday.

Iowa (7-2, 3-2 Big Ten) also got a touchdown pass from Nathan Chandler and Nate Kaeding kicked two field goals in putting coach Kirk Ferentz over .500 (29-28) for the first time with the Hawkeyes.

Illinois (1-9, 0-6), which has been hit by a slew of injuries, lost for the ninth straight time. The one positive for the Illini: they scored twice in the fourth quarter to avoid being shut out by Iowa for the first time since 1985.

Russell scored on runs of 2 and 14 yards and finished with 94 yards on 23 carries, raising his season total to 1,010. He ran for 1,264 yards last year and became just the third Iowa back to top 1,000 twice, following Sedrick Shaw (1994-96) and Ladell Betts (2000-01).

Russell left the game for good after his 14-yarder gave Iowa a 34-0 lead with 2:48 left in the third quarter.

The Hawkeyes had gone up 27-0 on Sanders' touchdown. He reached for the ball after it popped loose on Matt Roth's sack of Dustin Ward, juggled it twice before getting control and zipped 3 yards to the end zone.

Ward, a senior, struggled in his first start of the year, completing 12 of 23 passes for 108 yards. Freshman Chris Pazan replaced him in the fourth quarter and directed two scoring drives, throwing a 3-yard TD pass to Mark Kornfeld and setting up John Gockman's 24-yard field goal with a 47-yard completion to Eric McGoey.

Before that, the closest Illinois had come to scoring was field goal attempts of 43 and 48 yards by Gockman. Both hit the left upright and bounced back onto the field.

Chandler's 1-yard touchdown pass to Tony Jackson on the game's first series finished Iowa's longest-lasting - and strangest - scoring drive of the season.

Officially, it covered 73 yards in 18 plays and lasted 9:06. But there were five penalties on the drive, so Iowa actually lined up to snap the ball 23 times and ended up gaining 98 yards.

Chandler finished 14-of-23 for a season-high 243 yards and no interceptions.

Wide receiver Mo Brown returned for Iowa after missing five games because of a severely sprained right ankle and made a sliding reception of Chandler's pass at the Illinois 30 late in the second quarter.

Seven plays later, Russell sprinted around right end and outran the pursuit to the corner for a 2-yard touchdown and a 17-0 halftime lead.

With the Hawkeyes making few big plays on offense, Iowa fans in the sellout crowd of 70,397 had to look elsewhere for excitement. They found it in Sanders' touchdown, an earlier sack by Roth and two pancake blocks by 6-foot-7, 321-pound tackle Robert Gallery.

On the first play of the second half, Roth sacked Ward with a forearm to the shoulder that looked like a body check in hockey, then pretended to dust himself off as the crowd roared in approval. Laughter broke out when teammate Chad Greenway knocked Roth down with a similar body check.

Gallery twice flattened safety Alan Ball, a freshman who's 6 inches shorter and 146 pounds lighter than the Iowa senior. The crowd oohed and aahed when a replay of the second block was shown on the video board.