On Sunday, Norhtwestern played its first game since a hazing scandal resulted in the firing of long-time head coach Pat Fitzgerald. It didn’t go well.
The Wildcats lost at Rutgers, 24-7. They avoided a shutout by 19 seconds, while losing the team’s twelfth game in a row.
Interim coach David Braun was nevertheless glad to get things started.
“This the lightest I’ve been since I took over, just from a standpoint where we’re playing football,” Braun said, via Adam Rittenberg of ESPN.com. “It’s an opportunity to look around, look at these guys. They’ve been working so hard to get to this point. Are there plenty of things that I need to work on that are very apparent that I’m taking notes on as the game goes? Absolutely. I need to be so much better in this role and look forward to being much better. . . . But in terms of the heaviness of it, if anything, it was a relief to get to game day.”
And so the page officially has been turned for the Wildcats. Now, they need to turn the corner on turning losses into wins.