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‘Don’t need luck’: NIU mantra sparks Notre Dame upset that even New York Yankees manager noticed

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‘Don’t need luck’: NIU mantra sparks Notre Dame upset that even New York Yankees manager noticed


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  • After the Northern Illinois stunned Notre Dame, everyone wanted to congratulate Huskies coach Thomas Hammock – even NY Yankees manager Aaron Boone.
  • ‘Don’t need luck’ to beat Notre Dame. Northern Illinois Huskies embrace coach’s rally cry.
  • NIU coach has clairvoyant dream night before game against Notre Dame.

Thomas Hammock added a new phone contact Sunday.

The Northern Illinois coach received hundreds of text messages from well-wishers after his Huskies upset Notre Dame, 16-14, on Saturday.

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Several Mid-American Conference coaches pinged him with kind words after the biggest upset in conference history. Tucked amid the texts was a message from a number Hammock didn’t recognize.

It was New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone, chiming in to say congratulations. Hammock, from Jersey City, New Jersey, is a lifelong Yankees fan.

“For Aaron Boone to send that message, trust me, I was like, ‘OK, this is awesome,’” Hammock told me Monday.

Hammock figures Northern Illinois alumnus Rick Cerrone shared his number with Boone. Cerrone, Baseball Digest’s editor in chief, previously worked for the Yankees.

The Yankees are the best team in the American League. If they win the World Series, might Hammock return the favor and text Boone a congrats?

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“Hell yeah!” he exclaimed. “You know I saved that message. I saved that number. I hope that comes to fruition.”

I would say it will happen, with any luck, but Hammock and his Huskies proved last week they don’t need luck.

NIU Huskies embrace ‘don’t need luck’ mantra against Notre Dame

The Huskies erupted the first time Hammock used the line.

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“We don’t need luck,” he said in a team meeting. His rally cry played off their opponent, the lucky leprechauns.

Hammock’s four-word sentence became NIU’s driving force. No need to be superheroes. Just play your best, and trust your best will be good enough. No luck necessary.

“It struck a chord with the whole team,” senior linebacker Jaden Dolphin said. “As the week went on, we continued to harp on it: We don’t need luck.”

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Northern Illinois’ veterans knew they could beat Power Four opponents. The Huskies won at Boston College last season and at Georgia Tech in 2021. Hammock, a former running back, starred in the the team’s 2002 win at Wake Forest.

Those programs don’t enjoy Notre Dame’s pedigree, but Hammock believed his Huskies matched up well with an opponent ranked No. 7 in the US LBM coaches poll.

“To me, the game played out the way I thought it would play out,” Hammock said. “We stayed in the fight long enough to give ourselves a chance to win.”

The Huskies are an experienced team. Many of their top performers Saturday were in the program when NIU won the MAC in 2021.

That includes senior running back Antario Brown. He rushed for 99 yards against the Irish, added 126 more receiving and scored the team’s only touchdown.

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The transfer portal becomes a siren’s call for Group of Five stars, and Brown evaluated his options after his standout junior season. He met with Hammock last winter and said he wanted to enter the portal. Then, Brown called Hammock that night. He’d had a change of heart. He decided to stay.

Hammock counts Brown’s decision as a case of personal relationships outweighing a chance at a transactional relationship with a bigger program.

“He’s committed to NIU,” Hammock said. “He doesn’t always let people in his circle, but I’m in his circle, and I’ve been there from Day 1. I think he trusts me, and that means a lot.”

Notre Dame scored on its opening possession before the Huskies stiffened. They tied the game in the first quarter when Brown caught a slant pass from Ethan Hampton and took it for a score.

Kanon Woodill took care of the rest.

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NIU kicker on winning field goal: ‘It’s what we live for.’

Woodill had an idea while the second half unfolded that the game would be decided with a kick.

Northern Illinois intercepted Notre Dame’s Riley Leonard in the fourth quarter, while trailing by a single point. As NIU’s offense marched the field, Woodill put on the headset to discuss field positioning with special teams coordinator Adam Breske.

What yard line did the Huskies need to reach for Woodill to be comfortable trying a game-winning field goal?

Woodill told Breske the 30-yard line might be doable. The 25 would be better.

So, faced with fourth-and-2 from the 31, offensive coordinator Wesley Beschorner called a play-action bootleg pass. The Irish covered Hampton’s receivers, so he ran for the first-down marker.

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“I put my foot in the ground and got upfield,” said Hampton, a fifth-generation Northern Illinois student who grew up watching Huskies games.

Hampton needed 2 yards. He gained 3. First down.

“I knew in that moment that we had the game,” Hampton said.

NIU reached the 18 before sending out Woodill for a 35-yard attempt.

Woodill delivers in big moments. As a freshman in 2021, his 26-yard field goal with less than a minute remaining lifted the Huskies past Central Michigan. He scored a touchdown on a fake field goal in NIU’s bowl victory last season against Arkansas State.

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“When the game is on the line, that kid brings it,” Dolphin said.

And he brought it again. Woodill’s kick split the uprights.

“It’s what we live for,” Woodill said. “It’s such a privilege to have that responsibility and that pressure to go out and execute for the team. Yeah, it’s a little nerve-racking, but in the moment, you’re not necessarily focused on that.”

Notre Dame had just enough time left for a final chance of escape. Hail Mary, or desperately long field-goal try? Hammock could hardly believe the Irish attempted the 62-yarder.

“I’m on the sideline trying to count, how long is this field goal?” Hammock said. “Sixty-two yards?”

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Woodill normally feels uncomfortable pulling for a kicker to miss, but the stakes were too high to play nice this time. 

“I really never try to wish for a kicker to miss,” Woodill said, “but, I gotta tell the truth. I was hoping a little bit that the ball did not go through the uprights.”

The ball never made it to the uprights.

Cade Haberman recorded his second blocked field goal of the game.

Forget luck. NIU simply outplayed the Irish.

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The Huskies cued up Waka Flocka Flame’s “Grove St. Party” in the locker room. The song came out in 2010, and it’s served as the team’s victory music for many years.

Time to update the playlist? No way. Tradition is tradition.

“That win will go down in the record books,” Hampton said, “and we’ll be talking about it 20 years down the line when we’re old and fat.”

Northern Illinois upset of Notre Dame football a dream come true

Hammock dreamed of this moment. Literally.

Visions of NIU’s game against Notre Dame invaded Hammock’s sleep the night before game day. In Hammock’s dream, his team had a chance to beat the Irish on a last-minute field goal.

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Hammock woke up before the kick.

“I don’t know what happened,” Hammock said. “I wasn’t sure which way it ended.”

He found out the next day. Woodill made the field goal, and the Huskies made history that resonated all the way to New York.

Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.

Subscribe to read all of his columns. Also, check out his podcast, SEC Football Unfilteredand newsletter, SEC Unfiltered.

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Illinois

Small Illinois town reeling after Nazi symbol appears in yard

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Small Illinois town reeling after Nazi symbol appears in yard


A swastika mowed into a front lawn in the tiny village of Alhambra, Illinois, prompted a hate crime investigation by Madison County authorities this week, local media reported, in the latest in a series of disturbing incidents where Jews have been the target across the United States.

Jordan Payne, who has lived in the 700-person village since 1987, discovered the giant Nazi emblem while out walking over the weekend.

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He told First Alert 4 that he was “very surprised to see Nazi insignia carved into the lawn with a mower.”“It’s a slap in the face, a scar on our village,” Payne said.

The property owner, construction manager Mike Eaton, denied involvement and said he cut the grass as soon as neighbors alerted him to the existence of the symbol.

Alhambra’s city attorney and local police were determining whether the act met the legal threshold for a hate crime. Nearby residents expressed shock; one told St. Louis-based Fox 2, “We don’t want to see this kind of hate in our town.”

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Helen Turner, the director of education at the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, said that the vandalism fits a wider pattern.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes,” she told First Alert 4, warning that antisemitic rhetoric often “quickly escalates into violence.”

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National climate of hate

The Illinois case emerged just days after an Egyptian national wielding a makeshift flamethrower wounded at least 12 people at a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado.

Federal prosecutors said the suspect shouted “free Palestine” and sought to “kill all Zionist people.”

Nazi Swastika (credit: Wikimedia Commons)
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The Anti-Defamation League’s 2024 audit recorded 8,873 antisemitic incidents nationwide, the highest number since the organization began tracking this in 1979. 

Illinois alone saw a 74% jump between 2022 and 2023, with 211 cases ranging from harassment to assault.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also denounced the lawn vandalism, calling the swastika “a symbol of hate and genocide that has no place in a civilized society.”

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CAIR-Chicago executive director Ahmed Rehab urged authorities “to take the promotion of bigotry seriously and to address it whenever and wherever it occurs.”

CAIR spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper said the organization “stands in solidarity with all those challenging antisemitism, systemic anti-black racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, white supremacy, and all other forms of bigotry.”

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‘We will prosecute’

Turner stressed the need for swift legal action. “It typically begins with words, but it very quickly escalates into violence. The only counter to that is for our society to say, ‘These actions have no place here. We will prosecute.’”

As Pride Month began on June 1, local LGBTQ+ advocates noted parallels between rising antisemitism and a documented 80 % spike in anti-LGBTQ+ threats since 2023, according to a new GLAAD report.

For now, investigators in Alhambra were still piecing together how the swastika came to be on the lawn.

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Payne said that the hateful emblem did not reflect his hometown’s values: “This isn’t who we are.”





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Boy shot, wounded near community center in Matteson, Illinois

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Boy shot, wounded near community center in Matteson, Illinois


Juvenile shot outside community center in Matteson, Illinois

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Juvenile shot outside community center in Matteson, Illinois

00:21

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A boy was shot and wounded Tuesday afternoon near a community center in the south Chicago suburb of Matteson.

At 4:22 p.m., police and paramedics were called to the Matteson Community Center, at 20642 Matteson Ave., for a person shot. They found a boy of an unspecified age, but described as a juvenile, inside the community center with a single gunshot wound to the abdomen.

The boy was rushed to the emergency room.

Matteson police investigators learned there had been a fight between the boy and another person outside the community center that led to the shooting, police said. The shooting took place outside the community center, police said.

The shooter ran off on foot, while the victim entered the community center seeking assistance, police said.

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The suspected shooter was taken into custody about two hours later in Richton Park after a brief pursuit, police said.

Investigators are working with community center staff to review surveillance video, and the community center was closed for the investigation. It was expected to reopen in the morning.

Police do not believe the community is in danger. 

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Illinois High-Speed Rail Project Progresses With ‘Major Step’

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Illinois High-Speed Rail Project Progresses With ‘Major Step’


Plans for a high-speed rail route between Chicago and East St. Louis have moved forward after Illinois officials issued an update to a feasibility study into the project.

In a May update, the Illinois High-Speed Rail Commission said it was on track to publish the report by 2026—which includes a survey of over 6,000 residents in the state.

Newsweek contacted the commission via email for more information on the study’s progress.

The Context

A high-speed rail route connecting the largest city in Illinois to East St. Louis has been pitched by lawmakers for years, as it would provide huge levels of connectivity for the Midwest. The idea took a step toward reality when Illinois Governor JB Pritzker created the Illinois High Speed Rail Commission in 2021, to plan out what the route would need in order to work.

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Amtrak’s California Zephyr passenger train departs Chicago Union Station on March 2, 2022.

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What To Know

The proposed route would go from Chicago to East St. Louis, a distance of around 300 miles, with trains running at a speed of 186 miles per hour.

The route currently being studied is split into three segments. The first, the Downtown Chicago area, connects to University Park and Joliet.

The middle stage of the potential route, the Chicago-Springfield Gateway, features stops at Peoria and Bloomington via Joliet, and Decatur and Champaign via University Park, before connecting all the stops to Springfield.

The final part of the route is a straight connection to East St. Louis from Springfield. Not all stops featured in the study may make it into the final design for the route, as the commission is still determining how much demand there might be for services in different parts of the state.

The commission said that it had held online meetings—which had been viewed by more than 7,500 people—and that the full verdict would be delivered to Illinois lawmakers in 2026.

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According to the report update, a trip from Springfield to University Park on the proposed route would take around two and a half hours.

What People Are Saying

In a 2023 statement on the importance of high-speed rail, Governor JB Pritzker said: “Illinois is the only state where all seven of the nation’s largest railroads operate. That’s a unique economic advantage recognized by employers across the globe, helping our state attract and maintain quality jobs.

“By upgrading to higher-speed service on Illinois’ largest passenger rail line, we are solidifying our status as the transportation hub of North America. Investments like these do more than just connect cities—they allow our residents to access opportunities beyond their immediate neighborhoods, streamline regional collaborations, and open doors for new jobs and new businesses.”

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin said: “This transformative endeavor, decades in the making, symbolizes our commitment to improving mobility, creating jobs, and fostering sustainable growth. From local communities to federal officials, countless individuals have contributed to its success, leaving an indelible mark on the Midwest and our nation’s rail operations.”

What Happens Next

Lawmakers are awaiting the results of the feasibility study before the next stage of planning can begin.

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