Illinois State is making its 10th postseason appearance and seventh under head coach Brock Spack. (Photo by GoRedbirds.com)
By Barry Bottino and Dan Verdun
Illinois State will make its second straight trip to the FCS postseason and travel to Hammond, La., for a Saturday, Nov. 29 first-round playoff game.
Kickoff will be at noon.
ISU (8-4 overall, 5-3 Missouri Valley Football Conference) and No. 16 seed Southeastern Louisiana (9-3, 7-1 Southland Conference) will face each other for the first time.
The winner will face No. 1 seed North Dakota State (12-0) in Fargo when second-round play begins Dec. 6.
Illinois State received an at-large bid when the 24-team playoff bracket was released Sunday. ISU is making its 10th postseason appearance ever and seventh under 17-year head coach Brock Spack.
“It means a lot. We’ve built our program on success,” Spack told Prairie State Pigskin. “(Making the playoffs) is how you measure success in our sport.”
“These players have been great. I’m really happy for them.”
When the bracket was revealed on ESPNU, Illinois State was listed as one of the last four teams in along with Harvard, Lamar and New Hampshire. The network also listed the first four teams out: Austin Peay, Monmouth, Presbyterian and Southern Utah.
Redshirt sophomore linebacker Patrick Bauer played a key role in this season’s rebuilt defense.
“Going to the playoffs is huge for me and the whole team,” the St. Viator High School graduate said. “Last year, we played two (postseason) games, and we thought we could do even better than that this year.”
Illinois State is 5-1 in first-round playoff games under Spack. He took the Redbirds to the postseason three straight years from 2014 to 2016. His 2014 team finished as the national runner-up.
No bid for SIU Salukis
Though six Missouri Valley teams were chosen for the field, Southern Illinois (7-5) was not one of them.
The Salukis, who rolled to a 37-7 win Saturday at Illinois State, finished with a 4-4 league record.
ISU was the only playoff participant that the Salukis defeated this fall.
After Saturday’s game, SIU head coach Nick Hill said finishing with a .500 record in the MVFC, considered the nation’s toughest FCS conference, and beating No. 11 ISU on the road were impressive pieces of SIU’s resume.
“If you would call around the country — call South Dakota or Youngstown — and ask, ‘Is Southern a top 15 team in the country and deserving of a playoff bid?’ They would all say yes. I don’t think there’s any question.”
In the two weeks before playing Illinois State, however, SIU let second-half leads slip away in losses to South Dakota (53-51 in five overtimes) and Youngstown State (48-38).
One of SIU’s wins also came against Division II Thomas More, which is not counted as a victory by the FCS playoff committee.
Barry Bottino is a co-founder of Prairie State Pigskin and a 19-year veteran of three Illinois newspapers. He has covered college athletics since 1995.
Dan Verdun is a co-founder of Prairie State Pigskin. He has written four books: NIU Huskies Football, EIU Panthers Football, ISU Redbirds Football and SIU Salukis Football.
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