#17 Illinois Falls to #1 Ohio State

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – No. 17 Illinois fell to No. 1 Ohio State, 34-16, in front a sellout crowd at Gies Memorial Stadium on Saturday afternoon. 

The top-ranked Buckeyes (6-0, 3-0 Big Ten) were opportunistic in the short field scoring 24 points on drives that started inside the 40-yard line. Illinois (5-2, 2-2 Big Ten) uncharacteristically turned the ball over three times, leading to 21 of the points. 

Luke Altmyer threw for 248 yards and one touchdown on 30-of-44 passing. Collin Dixon caught four passes for 46 yards and a touchdown, while Aidan Laughery added 50 yards and a touchdown on the ground. Matthew Bailey led the Illini defense with eight tackles, including 1.0 tackles for loss and a pass breakup.

After the Buckeyes opened the game with 20 unanswered points, Illinois got on the board with one minute remaining before the half by David Olano's 24-yard field goal. 

Altmyer led a 12 play, 75-yard drive downfield to open up the second half. It was crowned by a one-yard Laughery touchdown to bring the Illini within 10, 20-10. The score, off an option pitch from Hank Beatty, is the first rushing touchdown surrendered by the Ohio State defense this season. 

Ohio State extended its lead to 34-10 with the addition of two touchdowns. Illinois narrowed the deficit to 34-16 late in the fourth quarter, when Altmyer connected with Dixon for a four-yard touchdown.

The Fighting Illini are off next week and return to action on Saturday, Oct. 25 for a road trip to Seattle to take on Washington. Kick off time has yet to be announced. 

PRESS CONFERENCES

Quotes

Head Coach Bret Bielema

Opening Statement:
"Well, first I want to say thank you to the fans, the community, obviously going into this gameday with big high aspirations and hopes. Unfortunately, our first half performance didn't match that.  Offensively and defensively, there were some things we had hoped to capitalize on we just weren't able to do that. But I did think going to the locker at halftime, as bad as that first half was with the turnovers, downing the punt, to give them several possessions inside plus territory and have fewer points. I thought that might give us a little bit of hope, but we just weren't able to ever get anything going, taking into effect the way we turn it over. Then also defensively, we must get off field on third down, that was some concern. So just not a lot of things went our way, but we got to create those moments.  I tell them all the time, before you can win a football game, you must stop losing it, and we lost that game. Just too many things that we gave them, a good football team like that you can't spot those opportunities.'

'I give a lot of credit to our guys to put themselves in that position. I know this is a resilient group. We are a 5-2 football team going into a bye week. When I saw the schedule come out the first time, I thought this was going to come out of it, win or lose this game and wherever we're at. I thought this would be a well-timed bye week. So, it's going to be important that we get right to get to where we want to be with five games left, so we must do a little bit of recovery. We'll do some recruiting this week as coaches and must take a deep breath. I got good coaches that I think I just got to make sure we reassess what we must get done to win games.' 

'Luke played well and did some things that I thought would be advantageous for us. We probably should have gone through a little bit sooner, in my opinion. The best thing that we got is an opportunity to get better this week, during a bye week, and see where we get on the backside. We're pretty banged up. Josh Kreutz, just a testimonial to him. When he got injured two weeks ago, they said he'd be out for three weeks at a minimum, and he was at practice on Thursday. Kaden Feagin had a small sprain last week. That's why he kind of was limited today. He never really practiced it all this week, and he tried to go in there, but when I saw that was bothering him, I just didn't want to put a ball in jeopardy. Then Ca'Lil got rolled up or got banged up with an ankle during the game. Aidan Laughery practiced on Wednesday, Thursday, so he's kind of coming in. It's a really good time for a bye week for us, health wise." 

On missed opportunities:
"Well, those opportunities don't come around very often, right? I always say that this is a week seven opportunity, and it's created a moment. We made it a big moment, in my opinion, the memory you don't want to have, right? But we got to learn from it. We got to grow from it. I think for us as coaches, we got to take a deep dive into why those things popped up. We can't just say, Oh, we had a turnover for being off the field. Are we putting our players in the best positions? Are we asking them to do something they can't do? Obviously, you're going against a good football team, so they can kind of maximize some of those moments. But these moments don't come around very often. You got to take advantage of them seven games in."

On assessing the bye week: 
"Yeah, I think we got some good players. We've got some adjustments on defense. When you lose a guy like Xavier, a guy that you kind of built things around. But that happened after week three and so now that assess where we're at, who we are, what we can do, I think is really important. I always think these bye weeks, everybody takes a deep breath. Well, to me, you kind of take a deep breath with even the excitement of, okay, where are we at? Where can we go? Because we kind of use it to teach it as a halftime of the season to look at the second bye week is going to be a little bit different, right? We're going to get two games under our belt. Have a bye week before the three-game stretch on the back end. So, this is a very important week to assess who we are, what we can do better personnel, I think would be the biggest thing. What can our personnel do well, and then offensively, maximize the strengths of Luke and what he does, because our offense goes as Luke goes right, and we got to be able to do that better."

On the miscues today:
"They're going to challenge us, that was going to happen. They're going to get up and challenge our guys, and they're playing pretty handsy.. There were probably two or three that we were close to getting in the other hands well. Lane Hansen is out for at least, probably this week, and maybe during the bye week. He hurt his shoulder at the end of the Purdue game. He's been our short snapper and punt snapper the last three years. Obviously, that showed up today. So, a lot of things that it's kind of what it is. We can correct it. We can make some changes, but also a couple things go against you. Literally, when I saw we put the knee down on the punt, I'm like, what else could happen? But if you begin to feel that way and you accept it, you are never going to get anywhere. So, we fought our ass off to get to this point, to make this a game that, you know, drew some attention now,  just because Ohio State's coming down, because we had two great teams, and I'm not going to diminish that. I'm super proud of what we accomplished, but it also is a good indicator that we're nowhere close to where we need to go to get this thing to be more consistent on a good basis. It's good against a good team."

Luke Altmyer

On gameplay and moving forward:
"We made two mistakes early. They did a good job maximizing on them and they're a good team. The game, I guess, was the number one team with a few turnovers, so credit them again, easily fixable mistakes. But you know we must move on. Flush it, take a shower and get ready to go play. Take care of our bodies and get ready to play."
 
On bouncing back and believing in the team:
"It's never easy playing from behind, especially against the number one team early and an older, mature group with a lot of character, able to snap right back into it, just to maximize that one single play that we had. And we were able to remember that's not who we are. You know, we're a group that takes care of the football and plays clean and we were able to remember that to be able to snap us back into it. So again, just credit them for making plays. Great ability on that side, great schemes, and I think we're a great team as well. I really believe that we'll show it in the next couple months."

"Whole lot in front of us. We're confident that we're going to go do some really cool things for community and fan base, for our group.

"We're going to move on, not get used to this feeling, and we'll be back - absolutely."

Matthew Bailey

On the challenge of playing against Ohio State:
"I think it was hard, nothing against our offense, but it was hard. Started in the red area, across the 50 defensively. We were just trying to put the fire out all game. Obviously, they're a good team and they took advantage of some of those moments, it felt defensive."

"We knew that we had a good shot coming in, as much as people talked about we didn't. Guy believed, when you believe in something so heavily. It's hard coming out with a loss."
 
On the progress they made:
"As tough as the loss was, I think defense took a step forward. We kind of found out what we're about and guys stepped up when they were needed. It's definitely going into this bye week when we'll take what we learn from these past seven games and move forward."

James Thompson Jr.

On their feelings coming into today:
"Oh yeah, for sure. Every single game, we have the mentality, we expect to win. Everybody in the room is competitive, so if we don't play out there, just play teams. We are out here to win. And we got a game plan we believe in every single time. So of course, we imagine that."
 
On the run defense:
"I feel like the run defense today got some good highlight play, but at the end of the day, there's some plays out there that we left on the table that could've been very game changing."

Aidan Laughery 

On the feeling of a loss:
"Any loss is going to be similar in the fact that when there's a lack of execution and when you could've made plays, different things like that, it's tough."

On his health:
"It's been rough, a little bit. All credit to our trainers and our staff, to everybody helping out. Getting back healthy and moving forward, obviously this bye week's going to be big for me in keeping it that way."
 

Postgame Notes

Team Notes

• Illinois moved to 5-2 (2-2 Big Ten) 
• The Fighting Illini are now 3-14 all-time in matchups vs. a #1-ranked opponent
• Illinois moved to 15-5 over the last two seasons, including an 11-5 mark as a ranked team during that span
• Illinois outgained Ohio State, 295 yards to 272 yards
  • Illinois and Texas are the only offenses to outgain Ohio State this season
• The Illinois offense entered the game averaging 35.7 points per game, and scored 16 points, the most surrendered by the Ohio State defense this season. 
• Illinois entered the game 14th nationally with a turnover margin of +1.17, but finished the game -3, giving up one interception and two fumbles to the Buckeyes
• 24 of OSU's 34 points were scored on drives that began inside the Illinois 40-yard line

Player Notes

• Senior QB Luke Altmeyer threw for 248 yards and one touchdown
  • Altmyer completed 30-of-44 passes, a career high for completions in a single game. 
• Sophomore RB Ca'Lil Valentine made the first start of his collegiate career
  • Valentine was limited to six yards on three carries, and left the game in the second quarter with an injury
• Junior RB Aidan Laughery 50 yards on eight carries with a rushing touchdown
  • Laughery's score, his third rushing touchdown of the season and eighth of his career, was the first rushing touchdown surrendered by the Ohio State defense this season
• Senior WR Hank Beatty recorded 42 yards on 5 receptions
  • Beatty, who entered the week as the only player in the nation with a rushing, receiving, passing, and punt return touchdown, took a toss from QB Luke Altmyer and optioned to Aidan Laughery on his touchdown run in the second quarter 
• Junior WR Hudson Clement collected 47 yards on six receptions 
  • Clement's six receptions are his most in a single game as an Illini
• Sophomore WR Collin Dixon caught passes for 46 yards and a touchdown
  • The TD reception marked the third of the season for Dixon who moves one behind Justin Bowick for the team lead.