Illini earn upset in OT battle

Two-point conversion is the difference in the NCAA’s first nine-overtime game.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Over the course of an unprecedented nine overtimes, Illinois survived Penn State’s botched attempt at a trick play, lost its quarterback and a powerful running back to injury, and failed to gain just three measly yards again and again.

When Casey Washington finally came down with the winning catch Saturday, he hardly knew what to do.

“I actually cried,” he said. “It just felt good.”

The Illini came out victorious in the NCAA’s first nine-overtime game, edging the seventh-ranked Nittany Lions 20-18 on Washington’s two-point conversion catch from Brandon Peters to end a string of goal-line stalemates under college football’s recently rewritten overtime rules.

The sides were tied at 10 after regulation, exchanged field goals in the first two overtimes, then began to alternate one-and-done drives from the three-yard line in the third overtime as part of a format tweaked ahead of the 2021 season.

Penn State tried to win it then and there with a variation of the famed “Philly Special” play the Eagles used to win Super Bowl LII. Quarterback Sean Clifford — still suffering from an unspecified injury sustained Oct. 9 against Iowa — was wide open near the goal line on the trick play, but tight end Tyler Warren’s pass missed its mark.

Quarterback Artur Sitkowski missed a receiver on Illinois’ first try, and both defenses held firm for the four overtimes that followed. Illinois attempted three more passes that fell incomplete, and Josh McCray was stopped at the goal line in the seventh overtime.

Meanwhile, Clifford missed his next two twopoint passes while Noah Cain was stuffed to start the fifth and seventh overtimes.

Sitkowski — normally the backup — was injured in the sixth overtime and replaced by Peters, the regular starter who had been sidelined by injury.