Prior to Saturday’s 30-22 win over Nebraska, the last time Illinois started Big Ten play 1-0 was in 2015 when wide receiver Geronimo Allison caught a one-yard touchdown pass from Wes Lunt on the last play of the game to top the Huskers.

That win came in Week Five of the season, and it improved Illinois to 4-1, but the Illini lost six of their last seven games and failed to make a bowl game in Bill Cubit’s one season as Illinois’ head football coach.

Bret Bielema is hoping that his first Illinois team is able to build on a Big Ten opening victory and eventually parlay it into a first-season bowl game berth, but that’s looking way too far ahead. Instead, Bielema is more focused on getting his team prepared to play Texas San Antonio this Saturday.

“The part that we try to train into our guys is not what they do it’s what we do,” Bielema said on Monday at his weekly press conference. “We put Nebraska behind us yesterday and jump into UTSA prep at the end of the day yesterday. Today players had a day off, and we’ll jump in tomorrow morning and hit the ground running with UTSA prep.”

There were parts of Illinois’ victory on Saturday that looked like a completely different team than what fans had become accustomed to in the previous five seasons under Love Smith.

The Illini routinely gave up more than 200-yards rushing running Smith’s 4-3 defense. That era is behind them. In new defensive coordinator Ryan Walters’ debut, Illinois allowed just 160 rushing yards and they didn’t routinely get beat over the middle of the field through air, as fans often saw against Smith's cover-2 schemes.

None of the Illinois coaches, including Walters, really knew what to expect in the opener. Though a big group of veteran starters returns, it’s a group that hasn’t had much success as a unit. Obviously, he was pleased with the outcome, though he sees plenty of room for improvement after viewing the game film

“What’s important is to learn from the mistakes and learn from the success,” Walters said. “Like why did you have success, what are the keys when you didn’t have success, was it a technique issue, was it a communication issue, was it understanding but conceptualization? That way you can grow from that and apply to the next time you’re in that situation again.”

Offensively, despite losing starting quarterback Brandon Peters, Illinois was still able to effectively move the football, especially in the third quarter when Illinois had back-to-back touchdown drives of 75 and 47-yards.

Rutgers transfer Art Sitkowski stepped in and played well, completing 12 of 15 passes for 124 yards. Peters hasn’t been ruled out for Saturday, but its unlikely he’ll play. Sitkowski will very likely take all of the first-team reps in practice this week, and its an opportunity to get better.

“A lot of people have made this statement that the biggest improvement comes from Week One to Week Two and it truly does over the years I’ve been coaching,” offensive coordinator Tony Petersen said. “We got to go out there and clean up some of the things that we did wrong to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Illinois has started the season off well over the last several years, only to crumble once they reached the Big Ten slate. It would be different this time, with wins over a Big Ten West opponent and a UTSA team that went bowling a year ago.

If the win over Nebraska has created some positive buzz, another good performance this week could start to turn some heads and make believers out of those who doubted Isaiah Williams’ post-game proclamation that this team is “different”.

The players are certainly confident, and Bielema says a big part of that is that they’ve bought into what he and his staff are selling.

“That’s the part that has been fun about this group is they just have been a complete sponge of what we’ve been trying to feed them,” Bielema said