It’s Week 6. Believe it or not, we’ll be midway through the 2011 Big Ten football season at the conclusion of Saturday’s slate of five Big Ten games. This week, BTN has Indiana hosting undefeated Illinois at a special time, 2:30 p.m. ET, and Northwestern entertaining perfect Michigan at 7. Don’t forget, Dave, Gerry and Howard will be on-site at Ryan Field at 6 p.m. ET for an hour-long Countdown To Kickoff show. Use our GameFinder to find your BTN game and track all of the action on our Big Ten scoreboard. Watch our latest Big Ten Blast here and check out Brent Yarina’s Week 6 Preview in this post.
At 7 p.m. ET Saturday, Northwestern hosts undefeated Michigan on BTN. To get ready for the primetime contest, we’re asking our fans on Facebook to rank some of the best scoring plays from recent Michigan-Northwestern games. Not a fan of BTN on Facebook? Become one, and then you can vote. Oh, and don’t forget Dave Revsine, Gerry DiNardo and Howard Griffith will be on-site at Ryan Field at 6 p.m. ET for a very special hour-long Countdown To Kickoff show.
Penn State coach Joe Paterno is getting rid of his cane and says he’ll be on the sidelines this week. That’s just one of the tidbits you can hear in the audio from the weekly Big Ten Conference football coaches teleconference with reporters. Read the selected tweets from @B1Gfootball at the conference office, then listen to any of the 12 Big Ten football coaches now.
Every week during the football season, Brent Yarina posts his latest Big Ten Power Rankings. Week 5 marked the opening of Big Ten play, and Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin all remained undefeated. As for the power rankings, they are not meant to mimic the Big Ten standings. What fun would that be? They aren’t scientific, either. They’re simply Brent’s thoughts on where each Big Ten team stands after its latest game and entering its next contest. Agree? Disagree? Tweet @BTNBrentYarina.
(AP) Nathan Scheelhaase scored a 1-yard touchdown with 13 seconds left Saturday to lead No. 24 Illinois to a 38-35 comeback win over Northwestern. The sophomore QB threw for a career-high 391 yards and three touchdowns for the Illini (5-0, 1-0). All three TD passes went to A.J. Jenkins, who had 12 catches for a school-record 268 yards. Scheelhaase had to engineer two comebacks to pull out the win over the Wildcats (2-2, 0-1). First, Illinois scored 21 unanswered points after Northwestern took a 28-10 third-quarter lead. Then Scheelhaase scored the game-winning touchdown after a late touchdown run by Jacob Schmidt gave the Wildcats a 35-31 with just over a minute to play. Read the full AP recap, check out the box score and see our Big Ten scoreboard.
