The Illinois Fighting Illini (2-1, 0-0 Big Ten) are preparing for the grind of the Big Ten portion of their 2018 schedule. Conference play begins Friday night when the Illini welcome the Penn State Nittany Lions (3-0, 0-0 Big Ten) to Memorial Stadium for the second night game this season. Night games have started to become a habit in the Lovie Smith era. Aside from that, the Illini are hoping to get their top signal caller back when this game kicks off.
Graduate senior A.J. Bush is listed as “questionable” as he continues his recovery from a hamstring injury. He sustained in the injury in the second quarter against Western Illinois two weeks ago and was replaced by freshman M.J. Rivers. Bush took the field for warm ups at Solider Field last week but was sidelined in a game-time decision as there were concerns about his mobility. In the end, Rivers was given his first career start in the team’s loss to South Florida.
Head coach Lovie Smith stated after last week’s game that the team would start Rivers again this week if necessary. Bush won the starting job coming out of training camp as he beat out Rivers, Cam Thomas (who has since left the team), and host of other freshman to get the starting nod. The 22-year-old started his career at Nebraska but never saw the field which resulted in his transfer to Virgina Tech (where he threw for 99 yards and a touchdown while running for another 129 yards and a score last year) before making his way to Champaign. Before the injury Bush completed 18-of-30 passes for 223 yards. He’s also run the ball 26 times for 142 yards.
Rivers in relief of Bush has completed 29-of-45 passes for 273 yards and two touchdowns, while running for another 24 yards. The Frisco, Texas native was held back a little bit against South Florida last week by the somewhat conservative play calling of offensive coordinator Rod Smith. The Illini faithful blasted both Rivers and the team for not attempting more deep passes down the field, as well as for the five times he was sacked and his decision making. But considering that it was his first career start against an FBS team as opposed to coming off the bench against an FCS team that’s never defeated Illinois, mistakes were bound to be made.
With Bush’s status still uncertain, Rivers has been getting plenty of reps in practice with the starters. He’s now had another full week of practice to digest the offense and scout their opponent so that should cut down on some of those mistakes. And mistakes are definitely something that Illinois can’t afford against a Penn State team that’s only allowed 16 points in their last two games combined. The Lions defense has forced three turnovers this year, and held both Kent State and Pittsburgh scoreless in the second halves of both games.
The Illini are back on national television as this week’s game will air on Fox Sports 1 with kickoff scheduled for 8pm. It’s a little late for a game in the central time zone, but this is being done to accommodate other programming on the network.
