Carifio: Of course NIU would have to take the hard path to a MAC West title

For the briefest of moments, it looked like NIU wasn’t going to have to win one #TheHardWay.

Arguably, they ended up winning it The Hardest Way.

The longtime slogan for the NIU football program has become a literal mantra for the Cardiac Canines, and it showed Wednesday in a 33-27 win at Buffalo.

Easy, hard or hardest – it doesn’t matter. NIU is the MAC West champ and heading to Buffalo for the first time under third-year coach Thomas Hammock after an 0-6 season.

“That’s the hard way,” said Clint Ratkovich, who, after a fumble by Buffalo, went 25 yards for a touchdown in overtime for the win. “Week in, week out it seems like we always have a close game. We’ve been lucky to kind of come through and win these close games. It would be nice to separate, but it’s just who we’ve been this year.”

For once, it looked like the Huskies were going to get that separation. NIU forced a three-and-out in the third quarter, then on the second play Antartio Brown went 47 yards for a touchdown and the Huskies, down 10-3 early, had their first lead at 17-10.

They weren’t done, forcing another three-and-out, then after quarterback Rocky Lombardi hit Trayvon Rudolph for a 36-yard gain, Ratkovich scored from 7-yards out. And the defense wasn’t done, getting another stop.

This time, however, the Huskies went on the hard path to victory. Lombardi fumbled, two plays later Buffalo was in the end zone with 3:01 left in the third and with 12:22 the game was tied.

“We never make it easy,” Lombardi said. “All year it’s been like this. It’s been crazy, but at the end of the day we keep pulling it out in the end, so I can’t complain.”

After each team traded field goals to make it 27-all - John Richardson just missed a 37-yarder as time expired that would have won the game - the teams went to overtime.

Buffalo was facing a third-and-1 at the 1, poised for a touchdown. But NIU did something it hadn’t done since Oct. 23. The Huskies forced a turnover. Quarterback Matt Myers fumbled the ball, and Demond Taylor picked it up for NIU.

Then Ratkovich made sure the Huskies wouldn’t have to wait any longer to be crowned the MAC West champs, going around the outside and in for a touchdown on the first play.

NIU 33, Buffalo 27. The 0-6 Huskies of 2020 became the MAC West champions.

And although The Hard Way has been a slogan in the program for years, both Ratkovich and Lombardi mentioned “buying the dip,” looking off-camera at someone, presumably Hammock.

Hammock said the phrase stems from when he took over the program and how the Huskies were coming off a MAC title the year before.

“The dip - when I took over the program in 2019, they were coming off a championship team, but it wasn’t a championship program in my opinion,” Hammock said. “I don’t think there was a mentality of doing all the things right that it takes to be a college football player. And I mean that sincerely because I played here. There is a standard and an expectation for the guys who played in this program, about how you’re supposed to act on and off the field. And we held them to that standard, to that level of accountability. It can’t be ‘if you’re winning games, you can miss class,’ or ‘if you’re winning games, certain things can slide.’ We wanted to do all the things right in everything we do.

“So when I said, ‘buy the dip,’ we were losing some seniors, it was a senior-laden team in 2019, and we signed a good recruiting class in 2020. We were going to have to play a lot of those players. So I said buy the dip, because I knew the type of evaluation we do as a staff, I knew the type of recruiting we were doing as a staff, and I knew the type of players we were bringing into the program. If you stay committed and buy the dip, it was going to be a rough season playing a lot of young players, but eventually, we would get to this point. And obviously we got here a lot quicker than most people expected, but it’s not quicker than what I expected.”

So the dip is purchased. It was done the hard way. And the Huskies are back in Detroit.

• Eddie Carifio is sports editor of the Daily Chronicle. Write to him at ecarifio@shawmedia.com.