WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Northwestern clawed out a 26-20 win in overtime at Purdue led by a career-best performance from quarterback Jack Lausch.

Lausch was 23-for-35 for 250 yards and a touchdown, matching a career-high in completions and setting new highs in yards and completion percentage.

"Gritty, tough, resilient, unfazed by whatever they threw at him," head coach David Braun said. "He continues to show up and play his butt off. Very proud of the guys around him, too...

"After a couple tough weeks it's not about pointing fingers, it's about what are we doing correctly? Let's get this thing together and go battle together. Very proud of Jack and everyone that battled their butts off for the win."

The Wildcats moved to 4-5 (2-4 Big Ten), but racked up very few style points against the lowly, 1-7 Boilers. Their 17-3 lead late in the second quarter evaporated as the game went into overtime tied at 20.

Purdue entered the game with a two-quarterback system but ended up heavily favoring experienced starter Hudson Card, who finished 21-for-37 for 267 yards and a touchdown.

Running back Joseph Himon II coasted in for two touchdowns, a 51-yard run in the first quarter and a 22-yard reception to walk it off in overtime. It was the first multi-touchdown game of his career.

Here are our takeaways from the victory that snapped a two-game losing streak and kept the Wildcats' slim bowl game hopes alive.

GAME RECAP: Northwestern nips Purdue in overtime, 26-20

Self-inflicted wounds continue to hamstring efforts: Northwestern got its second Big Ten win of the season, but it was an ugly, skin-of-their-teeth victory over a program that is still searching for an FBS win this year.

The first issue for the Wildcats is penalties: nine for 85 yards on Saturday. It's their fourth straight game of five or more penalties for 45 or more yards.

Cornerback Theran Johnson continued a stretch of excellent play on the field, but marred it with his second unsportsmanlike conduct penalty in as many weeks by appearing to verbally taunt a Purdue player after their fourth-down attempt was stopped.

His flag last week spawned a cycle of field position that derailed the Iowa game. This time, it forced Northwestern's overtime drive to start on the Purdue 40. Though they scored two plays later to win the game, it's an absurd lapse from one of the team's most experienced players.

"To be honest, I did not see what happened today," Braun said about Johnson's penalty. "When I do find out, that will be very directly addressed to make sure that message is clearly understood. We need to be a more disciplined football team in the most critical moments. We need to mature."

Two of Northwestern's penalties were delays of game, and the last one meant that the Wildcats spent all three of their second-half timeouts with 10:23 left in the fourth quarter. The Wildcats' last drive of the game started with 52 seconds left, and got to the Purdue 40, before Himon was tackled inbounds with 23 seconds left on the clock. A timeout would have been valuable there. Instead, Lausch and the Wildcats tried to another play, ending with him firing an incompletion with two seconds left to maintain a Hail Mary chance.

"For us to have to burn three timeouts the way we did is absolutely inexcusable," Braun said. "That has to get fixed and everyone knows that. There were different issues on each one but the overall level of urgency in and out of the huddle has to improve.

Lausch echoed Braun, saying he needs to exert better command of the team's pace.

"We have to be a little more urgent and that starts with me," Lausch said. "We'll go back and look at it but it comes down to me being more urgent getting us in and out of the huddle."

Braun has said over and over that his teams are disciplined, they win on the margins and they execute in all three phases. His team is at 4-5, but six wins and a guaranteed bowl appearance would be a Herculean task with Ohio State, Michigan and Illinois left on the schedule. The best chance is pulling an upset to get to five wins, and then get a bowl berth on Academic Progress Rate (APR).

But if they want to stand a chance in any of their remaining games, they have to cut down on their self-inflicted wounds.

Rotating Hilinski in at QB was a curious decision: In a surprising move, Braun decided to use backup quarterback Ryan Hilinski throughout the game against the Boilers. He finished 2-for-5 for 52 yards, with one interception on a badly overthrown deep ball.

At the end of regulation, Hilinski, a sixth-year senior known as more of a pocket-passer, came in to throw a Hail Mary with the ball their own 49. His pass was caught by Hayden Eligon II, but 15 yards short of the end zone.

It's not easy to throw a football 51 yards, or more like the 55-60 from where Hilinski had dropped back, but to make a direct substitution for more arm strength and come up that short was puzzling.

Even more puzzling was substituting Hilinski in for Lausch on the third drive of the game. Lausch had a rocky first drive, but still had led Northwestern to a field goal, and then handed off to Himon for his touchdown, and so had the Wildcats up 10-3 early on the road. But the staff stuck to their pregame plan of giving the third drive to the sixth-year senior.

Hilinski completed a sharp pass to Frank Covey IV for 16 yards and a first down. But then he geared up and threw a long ball that was intercepted, well away from its intended target. Purdue bailed NU out by turning it over on downs on one of the two drives that backup Ryan Browne played in place of the starter, Card.

Braun said Hilinski got his shots based on his ability to "push the ball downfield" with "incredible arm talent". In the grand scheme of things, that's true. Hilinski has a stronger arm than Lausch. But he also hasn't played but a few snaps here and there since 2022 and has more career interceptions (13) than touchdowns (10).

"We had a detailed plan of how to utilize him and in his opportunities at practice, he performed at a really high level," Braun said. "We're excited for him to build off that and excited by Jack's performance."

This is the second time that Braun and his staff have been unable to delineate between what an experienced and proven player can do in practice versus common sense and their body of work in the games. He called on backup kicker Luke Akers for two 50+-yard field goals the past two weeks; not surprisingly, he missed them both.

Braun demurred into coach-speak when asked if the staff will continue to mix Hilinski as part of a rotation going forward.

"We go into every week with narrow focus on what we need to do to win a football game," he said. "If that's Ryan Hilinski, we will not be afraid to tap into that."

The good news is that Hilinski and Lausch are close friends and the brief substitution should not drive a wedge between the players or cast doubt on the young starter going forward.

Defense bent but didn't break: Head coach Ryan Walters and the Boilermakers are likely tired of Northwestern's defense after the last two seasons. They have scored just 21.5 points per game even though they had 10 drives break Northwestern's 30-yard line. They have four touchdowns and four turnovers, with two field goals mixed in.

Neither win was pretty for Northwestern, but both times it was crucial for keeping hopes alive. In 2023, it sealed a bowl game. In 2024, it kept the Wildcats' postseason hopes alive. Johnson's penalty aside, he was excellent with a pass breakup in the end zone in the first quarter, an elite tackle to stop Purdue short on a second-quarter fourth-down attempt that led directly into a touchdown drive. He also made a tackle short of the sticks on Purdue's last drive of regulation.

Jaylen Pate was a menace with three tackles for loss, including one where he nearly took the handoff instead of Devin Mockobee. He also provided some laughs postgame.

"It was just like who we played last week, against, um, who'd we play?" he asked.

"Iowa," Lausch replied with a smile.

"Iowa! Been that kind of week," Pate said. "Out of the 59 plays they ran, for about 56 we dominated; Kaleb Johnson wasn't doing anything. Then three plays we had an absolute breakdown with missed tackles and leverage, and that negates the whole thing.

"This week, we insisted on every down... They racked up a lot of passing [yards], but [defensive coordinator Tim] McGarigle says, yards don't win games."

The Wildcats sacked Card just twice but delivered a few jarring hits and flushed him out of plenty of pockets, including a pressure that forced a stop on the final fourth down in overtime.

Greyson Metz continues to step up for the injured Xander Mueller and led the team with eight tackles.

"The preparation out of Metzy hasn't been any different prior to starting. It's been consistency, it's been willingness to be coached hard," Braun said. "Tim McGarigle is an incredible coach, and he demands a lot out of them but he's stayed ready... That dude...I told the team, I love showing up every day and going to work with this group."

They weren't perfect, and they'll face their toughest test by a mile in two weeks when they host Ohio State. But Northwestern's defense delivered when they were needed to send the game to overtime, and to seal the win once they got there.

Lujan locked in down the stretch: Much-maligned offensive coordinator Zach Lujan dialed up just what Northwestern needed for the win in overtime, setting up Porter and then Himon for massive gains in a seamless drive that covered 40 yards in just two plays.

Some of that is no doubt due to Purdue's immense defensive struggles, but the Wildcats will take their wins where they can get them. With injuries to Bryce Kirtz and Covey, two of the team's top three receivers, Lujan flashed some of the promised creativity and Lausch threw 17 of his 25 completions to a running back or tight end.

"I thought we had a great plan coming in," Lausch said. "Pretty simple defense, and I thought out guys did a great job of staying calm and staying collected."

With a depleted wide receiver room, Lujan got to put his South Dakota State roots to work and feed his backs and tight ends. Porter and Himon both had more than 100 yards of offense, but swapped roles for the day. Porter had eight catches for 85 yards with 17 yards rushing, and Himon had 78 yards on the ground with 34 receiving.

Tight end Marshall Lang had three catches for 36 yards, and Thomas Gordon had three for seven yards, including an incredible one-handed snag.

There is still much to improve on with timeliness out of the huddle and four punts in five possessions to start the second half, when they a chance to control the game. But this looked like a game called by the guy Northwestern wanted to hire.

After one rush and plenty of snaps where he dropped straight back at Iowa, Lausch was on the move against the Boilermakers. He had 10 carries for 34 yards, taking out an 8-yard sack. On a third-and-1, when Lujan drew the eyes of the defense with a receiver in motion, Lausch faked a pitch, rolled the opposite way and hit a wide-open Porter for 15 yards. That drive stalled out after a holding penalty, but it was a spot-on call.

After Johnson's penalty, Northwestern had to start its overtime drive at the 40 with an offense that hadn't scored the whole fourth quarter. Lujan was unfazed and unafraid to go back to the well, dialing up two quick passes to his backs and sending Himon in untouched for a score.

"It was a play we'd run two or three times before earlier in the game," Lausch said about the touchdown. "We knew a guy would take him man-to-man and then no one ended up taking him. Thought we had a lot of space for it, and pre-snap it was pretty clear we might have this for a touchdown."

Speaking of snaps, Lausch deserves credit for fielding a series of errant snaps throughout the day from center Jackson Carsello, including one in the dirt. In a game decided on a knife's edge, those could have been killer, but Lausch channeled his baseball days and was a brick wall behind center.

The offense, just like the defense, will face its best opponent by miles in the Buckeyes at Wrigley Field on Nov. 16. But after getting a lot of well deserved criticism in recent weeks, Luhan and his offense deserves credit for putting together their most yards since Eastern Illinois and their third-most points of the season.