WildcatReport is looking back on each game of Northwestern's magic 1995 Big Ten championship season as part of the team's 25th anniversary celebration.

If the win over Notre Dame in the season opener put Northwestern on the map, the victory over No. 7 Michigan proved to the world that the Wildcats were for real.

History wasn't on the Wildcats' side walking into the Big House on Oct. 7, 1995. They had lost 19 straight to the Wolverines. They hadn't beaten Michigan in Ann Arbor since 1959. They hadn't beaten them anywhere since 1965.

"This was the real deal,” said wide receiver D’Wayne Bates in The Foundation: Expect Victory. "If you had any chance in the Big Ten, you had to go through Michigan.”

And that's exactly what Northwestern did. Using a suffocating defense, an opportunistic offense and four Sam Valenzisi field goals, the 25th-ranked Wildcats emerged with a hard-fought 19-13 win that was their best overall performance of the season.

This was Michigan, after all, the bully on the Big Ten block. "The best team we played that year, hands down," said senior center and captain Rob Johnson.

The Wolverines, as usual, were loaded. They had stars like Mercury Hayes, Amani Toomer, Marcus Ray and a young freshman named Charles Woodson. Then there was Tim Biakabutuka, whom Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald still calls the best back he ever faced. The core of that Michigan team would win the national championship two years later.

“If we play them 100 times, they probably win 99 times,” said Johnson.

But not this time. Not on this day.

Biakabutuka, a "freak show athlete," according to Fitzgerald, got his yards -- he ran for 205, far and away the most the Wildcats allowed all season. But Northwestern kept him out of the end zone and managed to grind out the win.

The tone was set early in this one. Michigan jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first quarter and had a first down at the Northwestern 1-yard line, poised to put a hammer lock on the game early.

But the Wildcats had other ideas. As they would all day, they would bend, but they didn't break. Fitzgerald and the defense rose up and stoned Biakabutuka twice behind the line of scrimmage. On third down, Brian Griese threw incomplete to force the Wolverines to settle for a chip-shot field goal and a 6-0 lead.

Perhaps it was right then and there that Michigan knew it may have a fight on its hands and that this Northwestern team was a little bit different than the other 19 in a row they had defeated.

There were other telling moments in that half, too. Bates, a redshirt freshman, leaped up over Woodson to snag a Steve Shnur pass on the sideline. A visibly nervous Chris Hamdorf, coming in to spell an injured Schnur, threw a 25-yard dart over the middle to Darren Drexler, and then a 26-yarder to Touissant Waterman, to set up Sam Valenzisi's first field goal.

Right before the half, Toomer fumbled a kickoff that gave NU the ball at the Michigan 29. Valenzisi drilled his second field goal to forge a 6-6 tie with one second to go in the half.

Michigan came out on its first drive of the second half and established control, with Griese running for a touchdown and a 13-6 lead. The Wildcats answered a short time later to cut the lead to 13-9 with another Valenzisi three-pointer.

Then came maybe the biggest play of the game. Eric Collier picked off a pass from Griese -- a redshirt freshman walkon playing for the injured Scott Driesbach -- and returned it to the Michigan 31. A double-pass from Bates, a former high school QB, to Drexler, got NU down to the 5.

Finally, on third-and-goal from the 2, Schnur had Matt Hartl wide open in the end zone on a play-action pass. The throw was woefully short, but Hartl dove forward and made a sliding catch to give the Wildcats their only touchdown and their first lead, 16-13, early in the fourth quarter.

If you're a Northwestern fan, you can probably still see the play if you close your eyes.

A blitzing Hudhaifa Ismaeli recovered a Griese fumble a short time later, and a 46-yard Schnur-to-Bates pass set the stage for Valenzisi's last field goal to provide the final margin.

Valenzisi went 4-for-4 on field goals that day, the last one raising his school-record consecutive makes to 11.

Still, the Wildcats had to rely on their defense to keep Michigan out of the end zone in the closing minutes. On their last drive of the game, the Wolverines reached the NU 39-yard line and faced a third down.

How confident were the Wildcats in their defense? On consecutive plays, with the game on the line, defensive coordinator Ron Vanderlinden dialed up blitzes.

On third down, Fitzgerald hit Griese just as he threw the ball and the pass fell incomplete. Then, on fourth down, Fitzgerald again pressured Griese and William Bennett picked off his wobbling throw to seal the win.

Darnell Autry, who ran for a quiet 103 yards on the day, picked up a first down on the ensuing possession and the Wildcats -- who were beaten 59-14 in their last trip to Ann Arbor -- went into victory formation and let Schnur kneel to kill the clock.

The reverberations from that win would be felt throughout the Big Ten. Northwestern was a team to be reckoned with. They had beaten Top 10 Notre Dame and Michigan, on the road, within a little over a month.

The Wildcats knew that there was just one way to follow-up a win like this one.

"What do we do for an encore?" asked Ryan Padgett after the game. "Win the next six and go to the Rose Bowl."

The Foundation: Expect Victory, Episode 3 Part 2: Michigan

BTN Greatest Seasons: 1995 Northwestern Football-Michigan