Nebraska
Illinois at Nebraska prediction: Odds, best bets, player news, stats for September 21
Second-year HC Matt Rhule has the 22nd-ranked Cornhuskers wrecking shop on both sides of the ball, having outscored their three opponents by a combined score of 102-20. Their 4th-rated defense held their toughest opponent, Colorado, to 260 total yards while ranking 13th in defensive rushing EPA and 17th in passing success rate allowed. The Huskers are running at the 14th-slowest pace in the nation and need to shore up the offensive line miscues, as their 7.5 OL penalties per game is the eighth-highest rate in FBS.
HC Brett Bielema is also riding high at 3-0 with Illinois holding off a spirited charge from Kansas in Week 2 to extract a 23-17 victory over the Jayhawks in spite of a 42% post-game win expectancy. Though the Illini has been running the ball at a Bielema-esque 67.4% rate on standard downs (Avg = 58.4%), their passing game ranks 37th in success rate and 26th in EPA per dropback behind QB Luke Altmyer. The Illini pass defense is holding opponents to a stingy 1.7 net yards per pass attempt (3rd in FBS) with a 7.8% interception rate (4th).
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Game detials and how to watch Illinois at Nebraska Friday Night
o Date: Friday, September 20, 2024
o Time: 8:00 PM EST
o Site: Memorial Stadium
o City: Lincoln, Nebraska
o TV/Streaming: Fox
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Game odds for Illinois at Nebraska – Week 4
The latest odds as of Tuesday evening:
· Moneyline: Nebraska -350, Illinois +260
· Spread: Nebraska -8.5 (-105)
· Over/Under: 42.5 points
*odds courtesy of BetMGM
While BetMGM lines this game at Nebraska -8.5, there are signs that this line could creep up to -10, as the market is already showing -9.5 at some books. The Over/Under has dropped a point to 42.5 since the open.
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Eric Froton (@CFFroton) is not expecting points Friday Night.
“Illinois ranks 111th in seconds per play, while Nebraska plays even slower and ranks 121st. In their last game against Kansas’ 17th ranked SP+ offense, Illinois hung on to win 23-17. Nebraska just held Colorado’s high-flying passing offense to a paltry 10 points enroute to a comfortable 18-point victory over the Buffs. Both Kansas and Colorado’s offenses are rated higher than either of these programs, with freshman Dylan Raiola finally facing an upper echelon defense. I think we get an ultra-slow classic Big Ten matchup where points are hard to come by. Accordingly, I’m taking the Under 42.5 game total.”
From the Trading Desk at BetMGM courtesy of John Ewing: National Championship
Line movement (Last Week to Now)
· Georgia +275 to +325
· Ohio State +375 to +350
· Alabama +1100 to +900
Highest Ticket%
· Ohio State 16.4%
· Georgia 12.0%
· Texas 10.2%
Highest Handle%
· Ohio State 17.1%
· Georgia 15.7%
· Alabama 12.8%
Biggest Liabilities
· Ohio State
· Tennessee
· Alabama
Want to check out the other games on the College Football schedule this week? We’ve got you covered right here on NBC Sports with all the matchup, venue, game-time and TV/streaming info so you won’t miss any of the action!
Quarterback matchup for Illinois vs. Nebraska
o Nebraska: Consensus five-star QB Dylan Raiola had been committed to Georgia throughout the majority of the pre-college courtship process before a late flip to Nebraska threw all his previous plans in a blender. While the still raw Raiola hasn’t had to face a credible Big Ten defense like Illinois yet, he has completed 72.7% of his passes for 666 yards, 8.3 YPA and a 5-to-1 ratio. His excellent 4.3% pressure-to-sack rate is testament to his offensive line that is pitching a 1.5% sack rate (22nd in FBS) and has yet to allow a passing down sack this year.
o Illinois: Illini QB Luke Altmyer is a former four-star Ole Miss recruit who transferred here after Lane Kiffin and his hand selected starting QB Jaxson Dart came to town. Now in his second year as a starter, Altmyer has improved his completion rate from 64.6%-to-69.5% while averaging 8.3 YPA (6.9 LY) with an unblemished 6-to-0 TD/INT ratio (13-to-10 in 2023). So far, he is carrying an 83rd-percentile PFF offensive grade, which is a sharp uptick from last year’s 69.4 rating. Hopefully Altmyer’s improved pocket presence, Illinois is averaging a 3.5% sack rate this year compared to 8.3% in 2023, can allow him to buy time and make plays against a fearsome Nebraska defensive front.
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Player news & recent stats
· Illinois has turned the ball over just one time this year, while their defense has forced eight takeaways. Combined, Illinois is leading the country with a +7 turnover margin through the first three games.
· The Illini are still trying to account for the loss of star IDL Jer’Zhan Newton, as they rank 106th in sacks per dropback, 110th in sacks per pressure and have yet to record a single sack on a blitz down this season.
· Nebraska has drastically boosted their passing game efficiency with the arrival of QB Dylan Raiola, improving the team completion rate from 52% (126th in FBS) to 73%, which is the 17th highest mark in the country.
· NU’s run defense has been merciless this season, ranking 13th in EPA/rush, 10th in stuff rate and 6th in yards per rush. While the Huskers’ pass defense is allowing an elevated 67% completion rate to opponents, those completions resulted in successful plays only 26.5% of the time (17th in FBS).
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– Jay Croucher (@croucherJD)
– Drew Dinsick (@whale_capper)
– Vaughn Dalzell (@VmoneySports)
– Brad Thomas (@MrBradThomas)
– Eric Froton (@CFFroton)
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Emma Bullerman is spending her summer riding around in fields with her dad, and she’s thrilled about it. It’s not just for fun, either — she’s interning for the Prairie Plains Resource Institute and working alongside her father to conserve Nebraska grasslands.
“Prairie Plains has literally been in my life since I was born. I guess you could say I’m a bit of a grasslands nepo baby,” Bullerman said. “My dad is the restoration director, so even as a kid I would be out helping him in the field.”
Today, Emma is taking a more active role in aiding her dad’s work to restore native prairies.
“A lot of my summer will be in the truck with him driving across Nebraska to collect the native grassland seeds that we put into our restoration sites,” she said. “Basically, I’m just learning the ropes of everything that goes into grassland restoration.”
As a teen, Bullerman thought she wanted to do anything but follow her dad’s footsteps. Eventually, a few stalled paths helped her rediscover her love for her hometown.
“In high school and coming into college, I really thought I wanted to leave Nebraska and do something totally different from my dad,” she said. “I tried a few other directions, but pretty quickly could tell that I wasn’t passionate about them. I took a semester off, and then my boss at Prairie Plains reached out about helping with social media.”
It didn’t take long for Bullerman to catch the bug for conservation work and switch her major to fisheries and wildlife, the same degree program her father graduated from in 1995. In fact, she is a fourth-generation Husker with strong ties to ag and food science. Her grandfather is Dr. Lloyd Bullerman, a former a professor of food science, microbiology and food safety at the university, and her aunt studied food science at NU as well.
Getting back to Prairie Plains in her early college years helped Bullerman realize that she, too, had a calling toward this field.
“Being out in the field with my dad one day, I had a moment where I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been looking for. This is what I want to do.’ Finding my way back has been really, really beautiful.”
Working with her dad, she’s is feeling better than ever about her direction, her hometown and her future in Nebraska.
“Doing this work and studying at UNL has given me a whole new perspective on the state,” she said. “I used to be someone who was like, ‘I want to get out of here after I graduate.’ Restoring prairies and traveling all over Nebraska has helped me see that it’s so beautiful here, I just didn’t take the time to see it before.”
The future of data centers in Nebraska took center stage at a North Omaha town hall Thursday evening.
The event was hosted by State Sens. Terrell McKinney and Ashlei Spivey, who alongside Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh sponsored a bill in the Nebraska Legislature that looked to help regulate data centers.
Parts of their bill were adopted and passed in LB1010, which requires reports on annual power usage, water usage and ownership.
“Having this passed in a package showed a lot of bipartisan work,” Spivey told a crowd of attendees at Nelson Mandela Elementary School.
The proposed regulations were shaped in part by Bold Nebraska, an advocacy group focused on eminent domain and clean energy. Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and founder of Bold Nebraska, said before the bill passed there were “zero laws on the books” to address a boom in data centers.
“If one is coming into the community, we wanted to make sure that there were some basic transparency things in place,” Kleeb said.
Political discussions around data centers heated up in recent months following reporting by the Flatwater Free Press that showed Google is considering a data center in Nebraska that could require more than three times the amount of power the entire city of Lincoln uses at peak demand in the summer.
The Nebraska Legislature recently passed another bill, LB1261, that allows private developers to build and own power plants to serve a large industrial customer, including data centers. That bill was proposed by the governor’s office and celebrated by Gov. Jim Pillen.
“Our state is once again taking a bold and strategic step – one that will create an environment that attracts business and multibillion dollar investment, while legally preserving Nebraska’s unique and consumer-friendly public power model,” Pillen said at the time.
At Thursday’s town hall, McKinney called LB1261 “the bogeyman bill.”
“It’s a bill that the governor pushed through the legislature to allow for data centers to create their own power,” McKinney said. “It’s a bill that I stood on the floor and said this is going to harm our communities.”
LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – Hundreds of people are without power in southeast Nebraska after a severe storm passed through Thursday morning.
The Lincoln Electric System outage map showed 115 customers without power across the city at 11:36 a.m.
Norris Public Power District’s outage map also shows 45 customers affected by the storm. As of 11:36 a.m., there were nine active outages.
According to the Nebraska Public Power District outage map, 657 customers were affected by the storm. Most of the affected customers were near Plattsmouth in southeast Nebraska. As of 11:37 a.m., 27 customers remain without power.
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