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NIU keeps Miami winless in MAC

Jake O'Connell and the Redhawks continue to struggle on both sides of the ball. Miami failed to score an offensive touchdown against NIU Saturday.
Jake O'Connell and the Redhawks continue to struggle on both sides of the ball. Miami failed to score an offensive touchdown against NIU Saturday.

Adam Hainsfurther

Jake O'Connell and the Redhawks continue to struggle on both sides of the ball. Miami failed to score an offensive touchdown against NIU Saturday.

Another week ended in a loss for Miami University's football team.

The Northern Illinois University Huskies kept the RedHawks' offense from scoring the entire game, handing the RedHawks a 17-13 loss. Miami is now 1-5 on the season and winless in MAC play.

Once again Miami's offense, led by junior Dan Raudabaugh, was unable to get the job done. The most recent edition of a current three-game skid saw the quarterback not throw a single touchdown and complete just 19 of 35 passes. Raudabaugh, who was once projected to throw for nearly 3,000 yards this season, is now project to throw for less than 2,500 yards.

"There's a good chance that we might go into the game next Saturday saying, 'We want to play both quarterbacks,'" head coach Shane Montgomery said. "We'll see who gives us the hot hand early and maybe go with him for the rest of the game. I thought Daniel did some good things yesterday, but again we're just not getting enough points and we need to make sure we have someone in there who gives us a chance."

Northern Illinois, on the other hand, won its third game in four weeks with a punishing defense. Led by Bronko Nagurski Award watch-list member Larry English, the Huskie defense has kept Northern in the hunt for the post season. English however was held to just two assisted tackles in Saturday's game.

"Dave DeFranco did a great job with (English)," Miami linebacker Joey Hudson said. "I didn't really notice him in the game once."

Nathan Parseghian remains the RedHawk's leading scorer after kicking two field goals against the Huskies. The only other player to score was return specialist Eugene Harris. Harris ran back an Andy Dittbenner punt 63 yards to the end zone for Miami's only touchdown of the game.

After a scoring the only points of the first quarter on a field goal, the Huskies started out the second quarter with a bang. NIU was able to score the first touchdown of the game when wide-out Land Cox caught a three-yard flick by quarterback DeMarcus Grady in the end-zone.

Five minutes after the Cox touchdown reception, Miami pulled within three points of the Huskies thanks to Harris's punt return. The electrifying return man has two touchdowns on 10 punt returns this year.

"They didn't want to give him a chance," Montgomery said. "They tried to kick a low line drive, and he was able to take it. The thing with Eugene is that he was very questionable coming into the game. We didn't play him a lot on offense. We took a chance putting him on a punt return, because he wanted to do it, and it gave us a huge lift."

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Parseghian tied the game up at 10-10 with a 44-yard field goal just before the half.

The 10 unanswered points for the RedHawks gave them enough momentum to hold onto the tie before breaking ahead of the Huskies with a 35-yard Parseghian field goal with less than five minutes left in the third quarter.

The Huskies, however, answered right back. With 2:32 left in the third quarter, sophomore running back Chad Spann caped a quick, five-play, 67-yard drive with a two-yard touchdown charge.

"I told the guys I like the way we fought," Montgomery said. "We're so close. Both sides of the ball are just not making enough plays. We dug ourselves in a hole again, but we did a good job coming back."

Miami came close to a last-second win but were denied by NIU cornerback Melvin Rice and linebacker Josh Allen who broke-up back-to-back end zone passes by Raudabaugh.

"That's tough," Raudabaugh said of the late pass break-ups. "The game's on the line, we gave ourselves a chance to take a shot for the win and fell short."

Unlike in past weeks, the RedHawks were able to complete the game without turning over the ball once. Instead, this week, the Red and White committed 12 penalties resulting in 79-yards lost for the RedHawks.

"The one thing we talked about last week was turnovers," Montgomery said. "While we didn't turn the ball over at all, we had 12 penalties, and seven of them were on offense. A lot of them were five-yard penalties, but instead of having a couple of third-and-fives we ended up with third-and-15's and our chances of converting went down."

While the RedHawks continue to break down Saturday's game, the team realizes a rival is waiting in the wings as the RedHawks travel to Bowling Green, Ohio to take on the Bowling Green State University Falcons.

Miami's next game kicks-off at noon Oct. 18 and will be available on ESPN's Gameplan package, as well as on ESPN360.com.