There is never enough space in a game story to get in all the interesting tidbits of the football game you just watched. Here's a bunch of great stuff from the Northwestern-Minnesota game today, a 29-28 Wildcat win.

* Telltale sign of the game: Quarterback Dan Persa walking into the postgame interview room clearly exhausted. When a reporter asked about Persa's bloody knuckles, fingertips and a gash on his left elbow, Persa said: "It's a streetfight. You gotta be ready to go."

 * Of NU's 486 yards of total offense, Persa had 415 of them. He rushed for 106 yards and passed for 309 (23 of 30, one interception, two touchdowns). The question was raised again to coach Pat Fitzgerald about national recognition for Persa (since the game was nationally televised on ESPN) and, dare I say it . . . consideration for the Heisman Trophy.

"I don't want to talk about him that much," Fitzgerald said with a wry smile.

* Northwestern trailed for the first time this season when Minnesota's DeLeon Eskridge scored on a four-yard run with 59 seconds to play in the first half. The Gophers led 21-14 and took that score into the break.

"One of the things that I think is hard-wired into a Northwestern player's head is fight," linebacker Bryce McNaul said. "We noticed that we were down and we were trailing for the first time, but the attitude doesn't change. We have certain values in our program that we lean on."