After pulling out a three-point victory on the road at Michigan State last weekend courtesy a last-play field goal with 10 seconds remaining, the Illinois football team had the tables turned on them at Memorial Stadium against Indiana on Saturday.

Leading by as much as 18 points in the second quarter, the Illini couldn’t hold off the Hoosiers. Indiana sophomore place kicker Austin Starr completed Indiana’s comeback in the final second of the game, nailing a 33-yard field goal to give Indiana a 34-32 win and spoiling Illinois’ 96th Homecoming.

“What happened (Saturday) was a brutally tough, awful lesson,” head coach Ron Zook said. “It’s a great lesson but it’s awful painful. On the same token it’s one more thing we have to learn from and we have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Trailing 32-31 with 2:31 remaining, Indiana redshirt freshman quarterback Kellen Lewis led the Hoosiers 65 yards down the field to set up Starr’s game winning kick.

“It didn’t feel real,” Illinois senior cornerback Alan Ball said. “It’s something we have to learn from and come back and prepare for next week and be ready to play next Saturday.”

Early in the game the Illini looked well on their way to their first back-to-back wins in Big Ten play since 2002. The Illini scored on their first five possessions of the game, scoring 25 points and totaling 260 yards of offense.

Freshman quarterback Juice Williams completed 8-of-14 passes for 183 yards and two touchdowns in the first half. Both of Williams’ touchdown passes were to sophomore Kyle Hudson, including a 53-yard flea-flicker touchdown pass on the first play of Illinois’ third drive.

The Illini, however, opted to go for two two-point conversions on their second and third touchdowns and failed to convert each time, taking away two possible points the Illini could’ve used late in the game.

“You can harp on it all you want but it’s not the reason we lost the game,” Zook said. “If I had to do it again I wouldn’t do it, but that’s not the reason we lost the game by any stretch of imagination.”

After getting off to a good start, Illinois’ good fortune changed on the first play of the second half when Hoosiers junior Marcus Thigpen returned the Illini’s second half opening kickoff 98 yards for a touchdown to give Indiana a 28-25 lead.

Thigpen totaled 311 total yards on the day, 197 of which came on kick returns.

“We didn’t come out as intense as we have in the last couple of games and that was a factor in the game,” junior linebacker J Leman said. “We just didn’t get the job done.”

Trailing 31-25 the Illini reached into their bag of tricks once again with a 27-yard wide receiver reverse touchdown pass by junior DaJuan Warren to sophomore Jody Ellis that gave Illinois a 32-31 lead.

But Illinois couldn’t off the Hoosiers final rally and dropped to 3-2 against Indiana on Homecoming.

“We can’t go around holding our heads down just because we are on the other end of the stick,” Ellis said. “We have to keep playing because the season isn’t over yet and we have a lot more games left to play.”