With his team down by seven, and facing a fourth-and-2 just after halftime, Illinois quarterback Juice Williams hurried his offense to the line of scrimmage in an attempt to catch Penn State's defensive front before it was set.

But Nittany Lions Aaron Maybin and Navorro Bowman weren't fooled, and busted through the line and stood Williams up at the line of scrimmage for no gain.

It was a stark contrast from the Illini's opening drives of the first half, when Williams led his team on a pair of touchdown drives, which stunned the 109,626 fans in attendance.

But after the opening salvos, Penn State defensive coordinator Tom Bradley made some adjustments and brought more pressure to try to contain Williams and force him to beat the Lions with his arm.

"We just started looking at our zone blitz packages to see what we could find would work with what they were doing to us," Bradley said. "We got concerned about the boundary, but we did a good job keeping them from getting to the boundary."

Safety Mark Rubin teamed with Bowman to control Williams. The two shaded toward the line of scrimmage and helped negate Illinois' speed on the perimeter. The two led the team with 10 tackles apiece and combined to stop Williams seven times.

Bowman said it was difficult to prepare for Williams because it's almost impossible to recreate his speed and fluid direction of the spread option in practice. Penn State's scout team doesn't have an athlete with the same abilities as Williams.

After the Lions had a few drives to get used to Williams' speed, he said it got easier to attack the option.

"By reading his eyes, we knew when he was going to pitch the ball," Bowman said. "He had two weeks to prepare for us and it looked like he had our number early in the game. But we made our adjustments and really got to him and slowed him down."

Penn State held Williams below his average in both rushing and passing and forced his sixth pick of the season. He picked up a third of his 247 yards of total offense -- 67 shy of his season average -- during the opening two drives.

But Williams didn't credit his relative ineffectiveness to Penn State's defense.

Taunts and heckles rained down from the stands as he sat on the bench during the final moments of the fourth quarter. Never acknowledging the jeers, tears welled in the corners of Williams' eyes. Visibly frustrated, Williams said a lack of execution and mental lapses is what led to his team's collapse.

"We can't beat ourselves, that was probably the thing that stand out the most," Williams said. "Just dumb things, we can't beat ourselves and that's exactly what we did. We got behind the chains late in the second half."