FROM PAGE ONE
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
Wednesday, August 28, 2013 • Page B3
‘Give our kids credit, they came back and we hung in there’ • HISTORY Continued from page B1 NOVAK: That kind of put Michael in the headlights, because this was the front sports page of USA Today, Turner the Burner. So that put an extra incentive for them. The thing I remember the most is going out for the pregame. Two things, going out and seeing [Maryland], they were in their Under Armour or whatever they call that stuff, jerseys just walking around ... I coached in the Big Ten for many years, it was one of the most impressive-looking football teams I’ve ever seen. MATT CANADA (Offensive Coordinator): They had, obviously, very talented players. I don’t remember all the names but certainly had some great linebackers and great defensive linemen that were a challenge.
MARK LINDO (Radio Analyst): Parking cars were backed up. It looked like Field of Dreams from the press box, the lights coming in. It was a 6:30 game, but people were late getting there. The lights were on, it was fall already. It was a special night. SHELDON: Two wide receivers under 6-foot tall starting in that game (Sheldon and P.J. Fleck) and I think they kind of scoffed at us, like they weren’t taking us seriously. I believe P.J. had a whole bunch of catches in that game, and we both had game-changing touchdowns. Before the game, NIU honored Shea Fitzgerald, who was to be a starter on the offensive line before he was killed in a tragic porch collapse in Chicago along with 12 others. The team honored Fitzgerald with a moment of silence before the game, and each player had his No. 76 on their left shoulder. NOVAK: It was very fresh in our memories. We had taken Shea’s locker in the stadium there and we enclosed it, and we had kept everything just as it was before he had passed away. DREW: It was so emotional. He passed so close before the season was going to start. Just to see his family out there, Shea was younger than me, but his brothers, his family came there. You kind of feel like you know people’s families, they’re part of the family. Being one of the captains, I came out there before the game just to shake his mom and his brother’s hand.
THE GAME Maryland scored its only touchdown of the game on its first drive. The Huskies got on the board with a 52-yard field goal by Steve Azar at the start of the second quarter, and took the lead with a 5-yard TD pass from Josh Haldi to Fleck. Maryland responded in the second half with two Nick Novak field goals, and the Huskies tied the game on a Steve Azar 25-yard field goal with 1:12 remaining. NOVAK: They took the ball and drove right down in like seven or eight plays and scored. And I thought, oh brother. Give our kids credit, they came back and we hung in there. NICK DUFFY (linebacker): I think what Maryland tried to do was they tried to run the ball at us, and it just didn’t work. We were that good of a defense, I felt like at the time. And we were able to shut down their run. Our secondary at the time was Randee Drew, Rob Lee, they couldn’t get much of a passing game going either. So we were fortunate in the fact we had a great defense and we had all been playing together for three years at that point. DREW: I think our front seven did an amazing job stopping the run. When you play a good team like that, you can’t let them be multi-dimensional. We stopped the run right away. We were hitting them in the mouth, we were contesting their passes. I know they tried to go deep on me a few times. SHELDON: I ended up leaving the game midway through, or maybe in the third quarter, with what I thought was a season-ending knee injury, only to have the doctors check me out and find out it was only a sprain. I pretty much wrapped
Photos provided by NIU athletics
Wide receiver Keith Perry (1) hugs fellow wide receiver Dan Sheldon (5) during NIU’s 20-13 overtime win over Maryland. Sheldon scored the eventual game-winning touchdown in overtime to beat the Terrapins. it up and went back out. Fortunately, the adrenaline pumping through me helped to disguise some of the pain and discomfort. NIU had the chance to win in regulation as Azar attempted a 43-yard field goal in the final seconds. The kick was blocked. NOVAK: It was unbelievable how high [Maryland’s Curtis Williams] got because everything we did from our side was executed well. But they had a kid leap up and just make a tremendous play to block it. And you could see some of the air come out of the stadium, because that was our chance to win. In overtime, the Huskies got the ball first, and scored when Sheldon caught a 20yard touchdown pass from Haldi. SHELDON: I don’t know what the down was, but I think it was probably third down, we had about 10, 11, 12 yards to go. They called a great play, I was able to slip by the guy’s hand, get in there. On 2nd-and-7 from the NIU 22-yard line, Terrapins QB Scott McBrien threw a pass to the end zone. It bounced off Huskie corner Rob Lee and into the hands of Drew, who intercepted it at the 6-yard line. The celebration began. DREW: I just started running toward the ball, and once Rob kicked it in the air, it came right to me. I didn’t even think he’d pop it up in the air.
I was just running to the ball to, whatever I could do, tackle, try to force a fumble, anything I could do to help break it up. NOVAK: I couldn’t see. I honestly didn’t know what happened. Everybody was going crazy. The sideline was, the people in the stands, but I wasn’t sure what actually happened. Everybody else was celebrating, so I figured I might was well, too. DUFFY: That play, there was good pressure on the quarterback, that ball was so underthrown that by the time everybody had turned around, the receiver and Rob, who was defending him, by the time they had turned around, Rob ended up just sticking his leg out and it bounced off his leg. NOVAK: After all the struggles that we had with the losing streak, and all that, to reach that point, that game and the success. Later on that evening we were the lead story on SportsCenter, which is a status symbol of course. I mean, it was going from the pits to the penthouse. That’s what it felt like. LINDO: Everything Joe had envisioned basically came to a culmination that night, it was like the perfect storm. You had to have the right opponent on the right night with the right team representing Northern Illinois.
AFTER THE WIN NIU would go on to beat Alabama at Bryant-Denny Stadi-
um Sept. 20, and top Iowa State the following week. NIU started 7-0 before losing at Bowling Green, with ESPN’s College Gameday in attendance, on Oct. 25. DUFFY: You beat Maryland, you beat Alabama and then you beat Iowa State and then people are like, well shoot, Northern Illinois is serious, right? That’s the year where people say, this isn’t just another win on our schedule. This is a team that’s going to compete. SHELDON: It was really uplifting, we just upset a big team at home. Sellout crowd, the buzz about Northern Illinois football was really exciting for us because a lot of us came to Northern when they were overcoming the many years of losing. My freshman year at Northern, I remember games, it’s not very packed, there wasn’t a lot of interest in Northern Illinois football. And that game, after the season we had the year before, it was sold out. It was kind of incredible to show up for a game and see it sold out. NOVAK: Our kids were starting to gain confidence, but they hadn’t had a big win yet. And certainly that game with their ranking, gave our kids all kinds of confidence. They felt they could play with anybody and beat anybody on any given day. GROTH: We just knew that it was going to be a special season. Joe wasn’t extremely
happy that we added Alabama late in the schedule, but it paid off. Exposure was great and well-deserved. KORCEK: I told Joe and the kids, if [media attention] ever gets too much, we’ll stop. We’ll put a stop to it, or we’ll govern it. But we were hungry for the exposure. Joe [said] ‘Mike we’re hot, let’s go for it.’ Joe’s not stupid. The more interviews he does, the more newspapers, the more TV, more radio, it’s free advertising. It’s great recruiting. NIU finished the 2003 season at 10-2, suffering its sec-
ond loss to Toledo on Nov. 15. The Huskies fought through injuries at the end of the season, and Sheldon and Duffy were two players who missed significant time. There were only 28 bowl games in 2003, and the MAC had just two tieins. NIU, despite its best season in years, was left without a bowl game. DREW: We had lost like four or five starters by the time we lost. We lost the captain of our defense, which is Nick. I personally, I’ve known Nick since 2000, we came in together. He was the soul and the heart of our defense. SHELDON: I wanted nothing more than to go to a MAC Championship and a bowl game, because that would’ve meant that I could have came back late enough [to play]. I was really hoping that we had [extra games] at the end of the year because I didn’t want to see my season end. GROTH: We couldn’t buy our way into (bowl) games. We offered money to play into those games, to buy extra tickets to play into those games. That is an indicator of what’s wrong with the college football and the BCS system right there. The Huskies received a bowl bid in 2004 and NIU has been to a bowl in six of the past seven seasons. The facilities at Huskie Stadium have also been upgraded the past few years. In 2007, the Jeffrey and Kimberly Yordon Center opened, with the Kenneth and Ellen Chessick Practice Center scheduled to open this October. NOVAK: Jeff was with us at Alabama, and he sat next to us on the bus going to the stadium, he was on the sideline next to me at times. It really got Jeff Yordon involved. Kenny Chessick was around, but he hadn’t really gotten that far committed yet. But I think it really swayed Yordon over the hump and he really got on board. DUFFY: I know that we kind of, as a team, as a group, as a university, that 2003 really set the tone for, I think, a lot of what’s happened now. CANADA: What coach Novak did and building the program the way he did, the program has stood the test of time.The program’s built on hard work, the program’s built on tough guys that do love football. I’ve said it multiple times, the greatest part about coming back to Northern when I came back two years ago, the new facility was awesome. GROTH: Now, whether Joe Novak and Cary Groth would have survived if that was now, with all the social media pressure and everything that’s going on, [having the 23-game losing streak] at one point in his career? Probably we wouldn’t have. But we were able to do it back then because we believed in it. In my opinion it was one of the best hires ever, that I’ve been involved with.” DREW: [2003] means a lot to me. I won’t ever, ever let go. We can always have that to reference to the younger guys, and all the stuff that’s going on at NIU now, I haven’t been back since 2004 or 2005. I can’t wait to get back down there and see the facilities, because I know some of that piggyback’s off what we’ve done, and they’ve just taken it and ran with it. I’m very proud to watch those guys play on Saturday.
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