Illinois Fighting Illini Football: Redbox Bowl Preview

I predicted that the Illinois Fighting Illini football team would finish 6-6 and just narrowly sneak into their first bowl game since the 2014 Heart of Dallas Bowl. Alas, I failed in predicting their journey.

We watched one of the ugliest losses (Eastern Michigan at the buzzer) and we witnessed one of the most seismic upsets in program history (Wisconsin at the buzzer). This last decade has been a sad struggle for the orange and blue and it’s quite a list. Cycling through several coaches, embarrassing defeats, players transferring, a coach being investigated for player mistreatment and then getting fired a week before the season started! I could go on for hours.

The 2019 version of the Illinois Fighting Illini might go down as one of the most perplexing squads in the program’s history. A group that not many have been able to predict given the wild victory over the Badgers and the legendary 28-3 comeback at Michigan State. To go with said victories, they did eat that “L” against EMU and were pantsed against Northwestern, one of the worst programs this year, at home to close out the season.

However, their story hasn’t quite been finished.

One last tango with the California Bears is all that remains.

Weirdly enough, there aren’t many bowl matchups this season that have two similar teams facing off. If you look closely at the graph, you’ll find today’s participants at Levi’s Stadium are quite close to each other:

What is strange about this, if we follow the SP+ metrics for offensive and defensive ratings, there is something that doesn’t quite add up: Cal is considered a six and a half-point favorite. Now don’t get me wrong, this game is basically an hour away from the Berkley campus so it’s a quasi-home game, but that line stinks.

Cal averages 20.1 points per game this season. I honestly don’t think I see a team with an offense ranked 117th in the country (from the NCAA website) winning by a touchdown. For what it’s worth, the Illini are ranked 119th. So it doesn’t seem like either team will be lighting up the scoreboard much. Illinois is also 6-1 ATS as an underdog this season while Cal is a paltry 2-4 as a favorite. Lovie and the boys play up to their competition when their back is up against the wall. So if you want to put something down on this, I’d say pick Illinois to cover.

There is also the part where we need to consider some of the inactives for the Bears (that we are aware of), which there are a few. LB Joseph Ogunbanjo, WR Jordan Duncan, DL Tevin Paul, DB Trey Turner III, and DB Ashtyn Davis are all out for injury or other reasons. The Turner and Davis losses could be significant as those two are their top two safeties. It could make life for Brandon Peters (who is ready to go) and the rest of the offense a little easier.

And the winner is…

Do you really think I would pick against *my* Illini?

This is basically going to be a rock fight and could be the ugliest bowl game this year (maybe not as bad as the Lousiana Tech-Miami debacle). But I still think Illinois has a little bit of magic left in them this year. A victory would go such a long way towards recruits and sharking guys off the transfer market. Call me a homer, but I think Dre Brown and Reggie Corbin are going to take turns grinding away the Cal front seven, which does have stud linebacker, Evan Weaver. I don’t think Chase Garbers is any better or worse than Peters, but I think Peters has a slight edge with the best receiver in this game in Josh Imatorbhebhe.

On defense, Dele Harding just received All-American honors and I think he wants a little more. 21 more tackles would set the national single-season record, which would be one heck of an effort. When Oluwole Betiku has been healthy, he’s been a force this season with eight sacks. Those two alone can cause some problems for Cal’s popgun offense.

This game will be a low scoring affair, and I really think the boys from Champaign come out on top and finish the year with a winning record for the first time since 2011. Best way to open the new decade.

Illinois 21, Cal 17