It’s been three days since NIU’s 31-0 victory over the Arkansas State Indians, but the Huskie defense is still celebrating its shutout from last Saturday in Jonesboro, Ark.

Shades of 1990 popped up and were often used in describing the game. NIU’s last shutout came against the familiar ASU Indians back in 1990 when the Huskies, again, beat up on them by the score of 35-0. NIU crawled above the .500 mark (2-1) for the first time since the middle of the 1990 season.

Almost everyone on defense contributed to the shutout effort. With a defense that has given up an average of 16.3 ppg, the Huskies handed the Tribe their third straight shutout. The three shutouts were the most that ASU has suffered since their eight in the 1954 season and their first shutout since 1980 against Louisiana Tech.

“It means a lot to the defense,” said senior free safety Tom Rhomberg, who earned his first interception of the year. “Anytime you get a shutout, you’ve got to be happy, no matter what the situation is. If you shut out a team, you’re going to win. If they don’t score points, there’s no chance that you’re going to lose.”

“We were determined to not let them score any points because they haven’t scored all season,” said senior nose guard Rob Wagner. “That was one of our major goals.”

Despite allowing no points, NIU did manage to give up 275 yards of total offense, 149 yards of which came in the air. Rhomberg feels that it wasn’t a perfect performance.

“We did bend, but we didn’t break,” said Rhomberg. “We made some mental errors on defense, which cost us in certain situations. In terms of the third quarter, we didn’t play too well. We were out in the field a lot in the third quarter (6:58).

“They had some good plays they got us on,” Rhomberg added. “There were some third down conversions which we should have stopped, and we didn’t. We’ll go look at the film, figure out what we did wrong, and we’ll be OK.”

Wagner felt the same, but was confident about improving on those errors before next Saturday’s game.

“In each game, we’re cutting our mental errors down,” said Wagner, “and that’s a goal in itself right there.”

The Huskies will again go to the Big Ten on their schedule this Saturday at Madison, Wis., against the Badgers.