The Friday night B1G game features the Illinois Fighting Illini hosting the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Both teams are 5-3 overall and in desperate need of a win to keep themselves on the good side of things for bowl season. Illinois has won 3 straight after losing to both Ohio State and Purdue, and they have figured some things out defensively, it seems. Nebraska is riding a 3-game losing streak, and every one of them seems tragic. They have made all sorts of headlines for blowing games late, for the amount of time they spent leading, and for being the first team do do *fill-in-the-blank* since . . . there’s a lot of that floating around. It is hard to back Nebraska by a lot of points under the circumstances, and I am taking Illinois plus the points at home.
Honestly, I think Nebraska is the far better team. They should smoke the Illini; but that is a tough sell when they have been struggling to close out games. Their defense is elite, both against the run and the pass, but the offense has really struggled for the past month. Illinois has survived a quarterback injury, but Katin Houser should be back to form this week. He has a tough matchup, but facing the Husker defense with your starting QB is far preferable to facing them without him. At home, on a Friday night, in a must-win spot for Illinois, against a Nebraska team struggling to score and close out games . . . 4.5 points seems like too much. I’ll take the points with Illinois.
Nebraska vs Illinois Prediction: Illinois +4.5 (-110) available at the time of publishing. Playable to +3.
