MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.—Yielding 31 points in a football game doesn’t usually get a defense the recognition it craves. But despite losing 31-20 to Minnesota (2-1) Saturday night in the Metrodome, NIU (3-1) proved it could stop one of the Big Ten Conference’s finest performers.

For three-and-a-half quarters Saturday night, the Huskies stymied Heisman Trophy candidate Darrell Thompson and the Golden Gopher running attack as a whole. The UM offense did not get a first down by rushing until midway through the final quarter.

NIU led 20-17 at that point but on the play, Huskie tackle Ted Hennings injured his right knee. Hennings never returned and neither did the spirited play that characterized the NIU defense for the game’s first 51 minutes. Thompson finished with 102 yards rushing (65 came on 10 carries after Hennings’ departure).

“They (Minnesota) just started clicking and something happened with us,” Hennings said as he lie on a training table, his right leg wrapped in a cast. “I can’t explain it. We were holding them the whole night. We were working our (butts) off the whole game.”

Besides hard work, credit a defensive scheme devised by the Huskie coaching staff with neutralizing the quickness and speed of Thompson out of the backfield.

“(Thompson’s) had a history of taking the football and bouncing to the outside,” said NIU head coach Jerry Pettibone, “and we designed our eight-man front to make him bounce even deeper than he normally does and then just chase him to the sideline. I thought we did an excellent job of that all night long.”

Not long enough, though.

“Our main goal is to stop the Gophers,” said NIU defensive tackle Rodney Akis. “We did it for the first half, we did it for the third quarter, but we didn’t to it for the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter always belongs to the Huskies. That’s what hurts.

“We just totally got out of our whole game, and as a defense that really hurts us because we were out there last. We were out there when it counted.”

The final statistics tell much of the story.

NIU held the Gophers to 269 total yards (133 rushing and 136 passing) while compiling 340 yards of offense itself. At halftime, Thompson had gained 31 yards on 12 carries and the Gopher team had accumulated a total of two yards on the ground.

While Minnesota struggled to get its running attack rolling, NIU jumped all over the Gopher defense. Led by redshirt freshman Adam Dach, the Huskies rushed for 168 first-half yards – 267 rushing yards on the night.

Hardly a graceful runner, Dach is nonetheless effective as the lead man in the Huskie Wishbone offense. He rambled, plowed and trudged his way through the heart of the UM defensive front for 167 yards on 34 carries. Though it was a career-best game, Dach would have preferred a better result.

“I’m satisfied with my performance,” Dach said, “but it doesn’t mean as much. It’s just academic now. You know, we lost.”

Dach and his teammates wore long faces in the NIU lockerroom after Saturday’s defeat, but the satisfaction of beating one Big Ten team (Wisconsin 19-17) and outgaining another could not be hidden.

“Although we did lose,” Dach said, “it proved a lot to a lot of people on this team, because we played with them and we almost…we should have won this game.

“I think the attitude all week was that we were equal or better,” Dach said. “The way we came out and played, besides the few mistakes we made, we were the better team. I think that was obvious.

“Coach (Pettibone) said it right after the game, ‘There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a 10-1 football team,’ and I think that’s the attitude we have.”