The Bee Gees probably had the Northwestern Wildcats in mind when they composed 'How do you mend the broken Heart'. The team put up a spirited performance against Auburn but came up 2 yards short to lose 38-35 in OT. This was their second overtime bowl loss in as many years.
It became clear from the start that the only offense Northwestern had was their excellent QB Mike Kafka. And they rode that horse through thick and thin. They fell behind early in the first half behind 2 critical INTs from Kafka to go in 21-7 at the half. The killer for the Wildcats was a redzone INT thrown by Kafka that was returned 100 yards by Auburn for a TD. IT doesn't get worse than that.
The third quarter belonged to the Wildcats as they came out of the locker room all fired up to tie the game at 21 apiece.
The 4th quarter turned into an offensive shootout as each team scored twice to tie the game again at 35-35 when Northwestern kicked the ball to Auburn. Auburn fumbled the kickoff to give the ball back to the Wildcats. Kafka moved them within FG range and all Demos, the NW kicker had to do was kick a 44 yard FG to give them their first bowl win since the Ice Age. And the otherwise solid kicker missed. Game went into overtime.
There was a lot of drama in OT and when Pat Fitzgerald lost his kicker, he knew he had his backs to the wall. The NW defense held Auburn to a FG and Pat Fitzgerald decided to go for victory on 4th and goal from the Auburn 5 instead of kicking a FG... as he had lost his star kicker. Auburn made the tackle 2 yards short of the endzone and NW came up short again.
I hate to drop statistics as they often dont reveal the entire picture but here are some numbers for you: Kafka had 78 pass attempts and completed 47 of them for 536 yards with 4 TDs and 5 INTs. The 2 teams together put up 1050 yards of offense. Northwestern had 6 turnovers and Auburn had 4. The game had many spectacular catches from both teams, lot of poor tackling from Auburn and a lot of dirty play again from Auburn (they were penalized 12 times for 140 yards). How about that huh ...
And so the drought continues for Northwestern.
KUDOS to coach Pat Fitzgerald for not only taking his team to a New Year's Day Bowl but motivating his players twice during the game to come back from 2 scores down. And for finally going for the win though they came up short.
