If we rally and beat Illannoy, we’ll avoid the cellar by a decent margin (meaning the bottom 4 teams).
We’ll finish 4-8, 2-7 in conference: a better record than Nebraska (ignore that one game!), Indiana, and Illannoy. We beat Rutgers soundly head to head, and if they beat Maryland we can claim that we’re better than Maryland by transitive laws. So you could make the argument that we’re the 8th best team in the B1G - not what we were hoping for, but certainly not last place.
Importantly: if we win, Illannoy will be 100% eliminated from bowl contention. The odds are very remote that they’ll make it at 5-7 - but they’ll be able to practice for a bowl game under that possibility until bowl selections are announced, while our team can’t. Beat them and we remove that edge for next season.
If we lose, we’re clearly the 13th best team in the conference ahead of only the Hoosiers. Illannoy breaks our winning streak of six games and gets precious extra practices to keep improving under Bert. And we send off our seniors on a losing note.
So just win, baby! Beat the Whining Illini! Go Cats! Go Cats!! GO CATS!!!