Illinois State head coach Brock Spack celebrates with his players following Saturday’s 29-28 upset of No. 1 North Dakota State in Fargo. (Photo by GoRedbirds.com)
By Dan Verdun
Brock Spack had no difficulty going for the decisive two-point conversion attempt in Saturday’s upset of top-seeded and defending national champion North Dakota State in Fargo.
“I thought to myself early in the week that we’ve got to go for two (in that situation),” Spack said afterward.
Yet one question that followed the monumental victory caused some indecision for the 17th-year Illinois State head coach: Where did the Redbirds’ 29-28 triumph rank for him?
“I wasn’t quite ready for that,” Spack told Prairie State Pigskin Monday.
Forty-eight hours after the headline-making win, the Rockford native still wasn’t completely sure.
“We’ve had some big wins here,” he said, first citing ISU’s 9-7 victory at FBS Northwestern in 2016.
Of course, there were also road wins in the 2014 FCS playoffs at fourth-seeded Eastern Washington and No. 1 seed New Hampshire en route to the national championship game.
“Saturday was right up there, if not No. 1 as a head coach,” said Spack, the former Purdue linebacker and defensive coordinator.
Spack praised his team’s resiliency this season.
“This team is just amazing with what it’s rattled off,” he said. “That was just North Dakota State’s second loss at home in the playoffs.”
NDSU entered this year’s 24-team bracket with a 38-1 record in the Fargodome. The Bison were 23.5-point favorites to beat the Redbirds. ESPN analytics gave NDSU a 95% chance of winning.
None of that mattered when Illinois State rallied for 15 points in the final 2 minutes, 44 seconds to shock the 10,464 spectators and many more watching or listening around the FCS world.
It was the earliest NDSU exit from the playoffs in 16 years.
“I’ve been here for five years and never won against the Bison before, so obviously winning up there was a great moment that I’ve always looked forward to doing,” senior receiver Daniel Sobkowicz told Prairie State Pigskin.
A headline above an opinion column on a Fargo-Moorhead based news website read: “Offensive Bison offense leads to biggest upset in FCS playoff history.”
Whether ISU’s win is the biggest upset ever is debatable, but the final numbers aren’t.
Illinois State held NDSU to 179 yards of total offense, the fewest for a Bison team since 2014. The six NDSU first downs were the fewest for NDSU in its Division I era, which began in 2004.
“I really felt going into the game that we were the only team that could beat them just because of the way we’re set up,” Spack said. “We’re built to compete in the Missouri Valley (Football Conference).”
According to Opta Analyst FCS Football, Spack’s Redbirds are the fourth team to defeat a No. 1 seed in the Round of 16 since the FCS playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1986. ISU was the first since Jerry Kill’s Southern Illinois Salukis knocked off Eastern Washington, 35-31, in 2004.
Tennessee State (1999) and McNeese (2003) also conquered top seeds. Of note, none of those teams went on to win the national championship.
Illinois State will try to buck that trend in Saturday’s quarterfinal matchup at No. 8 seed UC Davis.
“I don’t know if all of our guys knew how good they were (a year ago) because of where we’re at (geographically),” Spack said of ISU’s 42-10 loss to the Aggies in last year’s second round. “We know how good they are now.”
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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