Tim Beckman is 22 pounds lighter.
The Illinois football team dropped its fifth straight game Saturday to secure its place among the Big Ten’s bottom feeders, losing to a two-win Indiana team that hadn’t won a Big Ten game in nearly two years.
The stress is weighing on the first-year head coach, both mentally and physically.
“Awesome! How do I look?” Beckman sarcastically responded when asked how he was doing. “Shoot, I’ve lost 22 pounds. … I don’t like losing. Hate it.”
With a background at top programs such as Oklahoma State, Auburn and Ohio State, Beckman isn’t used to struggling like this. All season long, he’s reiterated that this is unfamiliar territory for him. He’s not used to dropping five in a row, he’s not used to getting blown out and he’s not used to falling in front of the Homecoming crowd as it dwindles with each passing quarter.
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And while by now Beckman is used to addressing the media on the heels of defeat, he still struggled for the right words at the start of his postgame press conference Saturday.
“Wow,” he opened with. “What do you say?”
The Illini had two weeks to prepare for the Hoosiers. They had home field advantage and a Homecoming crowd on their side, but they still fell to one of the Big Ten’s worst teams.
“We feel like we’re preparing extremely hard week-in and week-out, but everything’s not clicking on all cylinders,” senior STAR Ashante Williams said. “It hurts because I know he (Beckman) wants to win. He wants to send the seniors out on a good note.”
As the losses stack up and Illinois continues to be uncompetitive within the Big Ten, negativity is building outside the program among fans and media. Much of the scrutiny has fallen on first-year head coach Beckman and his staff. The offense entered the game ranked 114th in the nation and the defense, despite finishing top 10 in the country last season, is giving up an average of 30.7 points per game. The transition from former head coach Ron Zook to Beckman has been a bumpy road, and the Illini haven’t bounced back as quickly as many were hoping.
“There’s negativity anywhere when you’re not winning,” defensive coordinator Tim Banks said. “It just kind of comes with the territory unfortunately. But we’ve got an experienced staff. I’ve been doing this a long time, and when things are going good, people think I invented football, and when it’s not, it’s the other way around. So I understand that it’s the life I chose.”
Regardless of the attitude toward the program, the Illini are trying to block out the criticism and focus on what they can do to improve going forward.
“To deal with tough times, you’ve just got to put your nose down and work,” quarterback Nathan Scheelhaase said. “You’ve got to work everyday with that same mentality.”
Despite the bleak conditions surrounding the 2-6 team, optimism remains in the Illinois locker room as they get set to travel to Columbus, Ohio, to take on Ohio State.
“There will come a time, hopefully it’s soon, where it’s going to click,” said freshman linebacker Mason Monheim.“Things will start turning around.”
“We don’t have any quitters on this team,” defensive end Michael Buchanan said. “We can still make a bowl game, so we’re gonna fight to the end.”
Chad can be reached at [email protected] and @cthornburg10.
