Northern Illinois's offense showed up, but only in pieces. The Huskies were shut out in the first quarter, then scored 13 in the second to get within 16-13 at the half. That was the version of NIU the preview pointed to from the UNLV game, the offense that can move the ball and hang around for a half. The second half was the version the losing streak had shown all fall. NIU was shut out again in the third, and by the time it put up 6 in the fourth, the Spartans had built a 3-score cushion.
The third quarter is the whole story. A 3-point halftime game turned into a 30-13 lead after 14 unanswered Spartans points. For a NIU defense that had given up 28, 41, 56 and 31 in its previous 4 games, holding San José State to 30 is about its normal level, and it still wasn't close to enough. The individual numbers for the guys the preview pointed to (Luke Weaver, Carson Clark, Jabari Bates, and whether WR C. Hoch was even active) weren't available in a reliable box score at press time. The quarter-by-quarter line tells most of it anyway: the Spartans won 2 quarters by a combined 24 points, and that was the margin.
Some credit goes to the San José State defense, which the preview called the unit to watch. It kept a NIU offense that ran for 240 yards at UNLV off the scoreboard for 2 full quarters, including the third, when the game was still there for the taking. It wasn't airtight. The Huskies put up 13 in the second quarter and finished with a fourth-quarter score. But it kept the second half lopsided until the result was settled, and against a team that had already lost 8 straight, that's all it needed to do.
San José State gets back to 5-5 and 3-3 in the conference, ending a 2-game skid in exactly the kind of game the preview said a .500 team can't afford to lose. Northern Illinois drops to 0-9 and 0-5 in the conference, with 5 straight losses this fall. This one followed the pattern of their whole first Mountain West season: hang around for a half, then fall apart for a quarter. Each week the loss has looked a little different, but it's still a loss every week.
