It’s been four days since the crime was committed. Five fumbles, one lost; one intercepted pass; allowing 10 different receivers catch for 157 yards and six different rushers run for over 200 yards is enough to put anyone behind bars.

However, the sneaky eye of the camera has caught every play, and NIU head coach Charlie Sadler has had ample time to study them.

“Defensively, I was not pleased with our play,” said Sadler, “particularly with stopping the run and letting them (the Illini) maintain the ball, eat up the clock and not allow the offense to get our hands on the ball. I think the stats indicate that.”

Who’s to argue with him? The Fighting Illini held the ball almost 20 minutes in the first half and 34 minutes for the entire ballgame.

Sadler does sound dismal, but the average NIU fan couldn’t have been more pleased with Saturday’s performance. They saw LeShon Johnson rush 20 times for 81 yards. They saw Larry Wynn receive for over 100 yards, and they saw Rob Rugai throw a 68 percent pass efficiency. They also saw that NIU was in the game until midway through the fourth quarter.

“Our offense played well,” said Sadler, “and our defensive secondary and linebackers played well.”

Still, being in it wasn’t enough, which is a much different philosophy from last year when the object was to try and see how long it took before the game got out of hand. They had the chance to rub victory in the face of the University of Illinois after losing 14 games to the Big Ten Conference.

“We really had opportunities to win the game. I mean, true opportunities,” said Sadler. “The thing that is distressing is in those opportunities we had chances to win it, and there’s a few times we came up short. When you have those opportunities, good teams will go and capitalize on those things.”

Sadler and the NIU Huskies could probably kick themselves after coming so close to victory.

“We’re really right there in the game. We pretty much had momentum on our side,” said Sadler. “It being a 17-14 game with 12 minutes left and we turn the ball over, the air kind of let out of us a little bit at that point and time.”