The seventh loss for a college football team can be seen as a death sentence.

Postseason hopes and illusions are dashed, and a team is left to think about what could have been.

The Illini reached this unlucky number of defeats against Northwestern on Saturday at Memorial Stadium after Northwestern cornerback Sherrick McManis plucked the ball, along with any Illinois bowl dreams, out of receiver Jarred Fayson’s hands to end the game.

Illini head coach Ron Zook is quite accustomed to this feeling. In four out of five seasons at Illinois, Zook’s postseason plans have been free. This will be the third season the Illini will play games under Zook after they’ve already been eliminated from bowl contention.

Zook, though, still doesn’t seem to have any creative motivators to replace the “carrot-on-a-stick” that was a bowl possibility.

“Keep trying to win,” he said Saturday, fresh off a 20-yard sprint after officials who made what some felt was a call that took the Illini’s fate out of their own hands in a game that ended their bowl hopes.

Now the Illini seem to have taken on a new role for themselves — spoilers.

Their next opponent, No. 5 Cincinnati, is 10-0 and in the thick of the national championship race. That, quarterback Jacob Charest said, is enough to keep the Illini motivated.

“We’ve still got a big game coming up,” he said. “We’ve still got to get ready for this game. I think that definitely helps keep us going and keeps us kind of up-tempo and ready to go for this big game.”

After making his first career start against Northwestern, Charest will take a seat at the opening kickoff in favor of Juice Williams.

Williams enters the last two games of his up-and-down college career with the same even-keeled attitude he has held all season.

“We’ve got two games left, and we’re going to play each of those games like any other game in the regular season,” he said.

“We’re going to come out and play hard, you know, Cincinnati’s a great team, they’re undefeated. They’re in position to go out there and play for the national championship, but we’ll go out there and do the best we can to try to win the game.”

Still, Williams and his senior teammates will leave Illinois with only one bowl berth to show for their careers. But Charest said Williams is still the same leader he was at the beginning of the season, when the Illini had everything to play for.

“You can tell he’s not ready for it to be over,” Charest said.

“But he’s doing a great job kind of leading the guys and stepping up and trying to get these last couple games to be wins. You can tell he doesn’t want to leave, he wants to keep going, he’s got to keep playing, but he’s doing a good job.”