Before the 1990 college football season started, several publications had named NIU as a possible Top-20 breakthrough team.

Then the Huskies fell to 2-3 and the critics began howling that the pre-season hype was a fluke.

Since then, NIU has recorded two victories, is back above .500 and is gaining momentum for their final four games.

“I’ve been pleased with what we’ve done this year. Obviously I’m not pleased with everything, but I think that we’ve executed well,” offensive coordinator Mike Summers said. “If we can continue to get better from this point, and make the improvement that we’ve made from the start of the season to here through the next four games, then I really think we’ll finish the season as best we can.”

In the last two games, the Huskies have amassed a total of 1,248 net offensive yards and outscored their opponents 108-18. In the previous five games, they had gathered 1,857 yards and were outscored 159-105.

Summers feels that the progression is a phase that every offense goes through early in the year.

“Like most offenses in the country, as time goes on you begin to execute your offense better,” he said. “It’s a timing thing, an understanding of what you’re doing, and as each practice and each game goes by, the timing and understanding begin to grow and eveything starts to mesh well. And the results you end up with are what we’ve had the last two weeks.

“We’ve got three phases of our option that we feel good about. When we decide to choose any one of those three, we expect to make yards. We’ve done it with Adam (Dach), we’ve done it with Stacey (Robinson), we’ve done it with the halfbacks and we’ve done it with our wide receivers. We’re confident that we can choose any part of the option to attack a defense with, and that will be successful for us.”

The offense can’t take full credit for the abrupt turnaround. The defense, injuries and all, has held their foes scoreless in the last six quarters and has forced eight turnovers in the last two games, compared to only six in the first five games.

“I feel good about the normal progression of our defense because of our younger players,” head coach Jerry Pettibone said. “The kids at tackle, the kids at inside ‘backer, a couple of them in the secondary and at outside ‘backer have worked hard during the week and the improvement they’ve made is really starting to show during the games.”

“The kids have finally started playing up to their potential,” outside linebacker coach Mike Sabock said. “Earlier in the year, the young kids were making young mistakes. We had a lot of guys who hadn’t played a lot, especially after we had a couple of early injuries.”

The defensive line is also a spot where injuries have forced coach Sheldon Herd to play some younger players.

“It’s come to a point where they’ve done enough and played enough that it’s starting to pay off,” he said. “They’ve all played now, and they’ve played a lot in the last two weeks. We’ve developed depth at the d-line positions.”