EVANSTON, Ill. -- Not to belabor the point, but the gradual, but seemingly inevitable, descent continues.

After staging an offensive field day in a 41-37 win the week before, the Rice Owl offensive unit fell flat as a pancake against the Northwestern Wildcat defense Saturday. Meanwhile, the Flock defensive unit appeared game but outmanned, allowing ‘Cat senior quarterback Dan Persa a career day passing.

The result: a deceptively innocuous 28-6 win posted on the scoreboard for the Wildcats – but it really wasn’t all that close.

After hanging with NU for the first ten minutes of the game, the Owls pretty much disappeared on both sides of the ball. Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald had an answer for why the Wildcats weren’t necessarily putting the hammer down from the onset.

"We weren't sure quite how they were going to defend us, so we had to do a little adjusting there in the first couple sets offensively," he said, postgame. "Once we saw they were going to load the box we would take advantage by throwing the football."

And throw they did. Veteran NU quarterback Dan Persa, showing no ill effects from a non-throwing- shoulder injury suffered the week before in the Wildcats’ win at Nebraska, tossed for a career-high 372 yards, while his favorite receiver, Jeremy Ebert, set a personal best with seven receptions for 208 yards, including three for 116 yards in the first quarter alone.

Ninety-yard TD pass got things going for Wildcats

One of those was a 90-yard touchdown pass which let the genie out of the bottle; it came on a third and four after a Kyle Martens punt had pinned Northwestern back at their own four yard line.

The pass play – the second-longest in NU school history, by the way – was the result of an apparent breakdown in defensive coverage. Ebert caught the ball near the Northwestern 35, with nary an Owl defensive back within ten yards of him.

That made it 7-0, Northwestern, with four minutes to go in the first quarter. While the Owl offense just couldn’t get anything scratched up, the defense held the fort impressively for another 15 minutes, until, on – guess what – third and long at the NU 22, Persa hit Demetrius Fields who broke out for 50 yards to the Owl 28.

Three plays later, Persa hit Fields again in the end zone from 15 yards out, and it was 14-0, Northwestern, with the Rice offense up that point having scarcely raised a whimper. But in response, the Owl offensive unit got something going, as Fanuzzi hit Donte Moore for nine, and then Tyler Smith picked up 18 yards total on three straight carries.

The Owls were camped with a first down at the Northwestern 36, with a chance to get back in the game, but after one play out of the Wild Owl produced a loss of two yards, Nick Fanuzzi came in, dropped back on third and eleven, and Northwestern blitzed the student body. Nick was hit as he threw the ball and his pass was intercepted by defensive end Tyler Scott.

Persa came in ran the two-minute offense the way it’s supposed to be done, completing four straight passes; the fourth, a 17-yarder to Demetrius Fields, who broke several tackles en route to the end zone. "You think you have him sacked, you think you have him trapped, and he puts it right where it needs to go," Rice head coach David Bailiff glumly remarked of Persa’s consistent heroics.

With only 30 seconds to go in the half, NU squibbed the kickoff, and the Owls were able to start at their 43. Two quick completions to Andre Gautreaux and Randy Kitchens advanced the ball as far as the Northwestern 43, and from there Chris Boswell attempted a 60-yard field goal.

Let it never be said that the reliable sophomore kicker is out of range, for he did miss this 60-yarder – but only because it smacked the crossbar. Why me, Lord?

Offensive coaches must've been eating hot dogs at haltime

Once again, whatever attempt that was made at halftime adjustments by the Rice offensive coaching staff was ill-conceived, to say the least. In the third quarter, Rice managed to run a grand total of six plays for a grand total of 17 yards total offense.

With that kind of offensive production, it’s a tribute to the Owl defense that it held NU scoreless for that same period. The Wildcats did, in fact, complete a 59-yard, ten-play drive that started late in the third, when Persa hit Kain Colter from three yards out to make it 28-0 with 13 minutes left in the game.

It was looking mighty likely that the Owls were about to be shut out for the first time since Dennis Franchione did it for spite in a 37-0 TCU win in Fort Worth eleven years ago.

But with six minutes left in the game, the Owls took possession after Paul Porras forced an Alex Daniel fumble, recovered by Scott Solomon at the Rice 37.

After picking up a single first down, the Owls ran the reverse pass, and Jordan Taylor hit Andre Gautreaux for 43 yards to the Northwestern nine yard line. Next play, Tyler Smith took it into the end zone, and the Owls had avoided the shutout.

For the game, with that final foray, Rice had run just 16 plays for 23 total yards while in Northwestern territory (remember, the 43-yard trickeroo started at the Rice 48). That Tyler Smith nine-yard TD run? It was the ONLY play in the second half that the Owls had run starting in enemy territory. Nick Fanuzzi’s passing yardage total Saturday? It was 92, after he had garnered 405 the week before against UTEP.

But to add insult to injury (and thank goodness not the other way around), Chris Boswell lost his footing on the PAT attempt and the kick went awry. After the game, it was said the Owls had had footing problems throughout the afternoon. OK, who’s in charge of footwear? Anybody?

You have to take care of everything, even the little things, in order to win on the road in the Big Ten, Coach Bailiff said afterwards.

"When you go on the road against the Big Ten, you have to put it all together, offensively and defensively and with special teams," he noted. "And we didn't do that today. It starts with me, I've got to do a better job coaching."

"Offensively, we couldn't get a rhythm going. Last week we had big plays and ran the ball and this week we really didn't get any rhythm of any offense going all day long today. Defensively did some incredible things but we gave up two big plays in the first half and gave up points on that turnover. If somebody is making big plays, you've got to make them right back at them and we didn't do that."

There were more than a few courageous individual efforts on their on part of the blue and grey Saturday, especially on defense.  Two in particular were well crafted interceptions by Corey Frazier and Bryce Callahan -- Bryce's sixth of the season -- both of them occasioned by first-rate coverage and positioning by the two Owl defenders, and both thedirect result of acrobatic leaps into the air to take away long completions from the Wildcats. 

But they’ll be largely lost in the gradual, purgatorial descent that this team, and this program, appears to be continuing to be making, despite the occasional bright-spot win.

"I've never been able to go to a bowl, and I'm going to miss out on something special," senior linebacker and team spark-plug Justin Allen said afterwards. "That's what happens when you don't win."

--P.T.H.

Though they're 1,200 miles apart, Rice- NU in many ways a neighborhood tussle

EVANSTON, Ill. (Nov. 10) – Google the terms "Rice vs. North- western," and instead of link after link to football stories, the first thing one encounters is link after link to earnest message board discussions – "which is the better school, Rice or Northwestern? I got admitted to both; which should I attend?"

Owlook

Indeed, though the Big 10 school is larger in undergraduate enrollment by a factor of nearly three to one, the schools have many similarities and attract much the same kind of applicant. NU has edged out Rice in the U.S. News national rankings the past few times out, but for many years before that the edge was held on South Main.

The two institutions have something else much in common, and that is a very spotty historical record on the football field. Rice had the more storied early football success, while NU’s only bowl appearance in history, prior to 1996, was the ‘49 Rose Bowl.

NU Coach Pat Fitzgerald, Rice coach David Bailiff share American Football Coaches Association’s Academic Achievement Award last December (AFCA photo)

But then came the Gary Barnett Renaissance, when the Wildcats stormed to a 10-2 record during the 1995 season and finally made it back to Pasadena. Since then, NU has won three Big Ten championships or co-championships and has rendered itself bowl-eligible in seven out of the last eight seasons.

Another way to chart the Wildcats’ progress (or Rice’s regress): Rice and NU have played six times in the past 44 years. In 1967, the Owls won 50-6 in Houston. In 1991 and ‘92, the Owls easily defeated the Cats, 31-14 at home and then, behind Trevor Cobb, 36-7, in Evanston. Back in Evanston in 1997, the Owls won a come-from-behind, 40-34 thriller. In the return match the next year at Rice, Gary Barnett pulled every trick play in the book to eke out a 23-14 victory. And then last year in Houston, after keeping it close for a half, the Owls fell, 30-13.