No. 10 Penn State football will take on Illinois Friday night for the first time since 2015.

This Big Ten matchup has been historically one-sided in favor of the Nittany Lions. Penn State is 18-5 all-time against the Fighting Illini and has won six of their past eight meetings.

Penn State first took on Illinois in the 1959 and 1960 seasons, long before the days of the Big Ten. The Nittany Lions opened the series with a 20-9 victory in Cleveland, OH before losing in Champaign one season later.

Joe Paterno’s first game against Illinois came twelve years after the two-game series ended. His sixteenth-ranked squad won a tricky road game 35-17 in the teams’ final meeting until the early 1990s.

Penn State won its first two meetings with Illinois after announcing its intention to join the Big Ten at the turn of the decade. The Nittany Lions would go on to win five straight conference meetings with the Fighting Illini before suffering their first loss to Illinois in 51 years in 2001.

The Nittany Lions exacted their revenge one season later before the series was continued in their 2005 Big Ten-winning season. Paterno’s squad made short work of the Illini, defeating them 63-10 en route to its second conference title.

Penn State won three of the next four meetings before suffering its largest-ever defeat in the series — a 33-13 defeat in Happy Valley in 2010. The two teams’ meeting in 2008 was played under White Out conditions and marked Derrick Williams’ breakout game as a Nittany Lion.

Williams cemented himself in Penn State folklore with three touchdowns in that game — one on the ground, one in the air, and an iconic 94-yard kickoff return en route to an emphatic 38-24 victory in Happy Valley. The team ended up winning its third conference title that season, in no small part thanks to Williams’ legendary performance.

The two teams’ next meeting was perhaps the most famous, as a sloppy 10-7 Penn State victory at Beaver Stadium marked Joe Paterno’s 409th and final victory as head coach of the program. Led by a moxie-filled effort from an injured Matt McGloin, Paterno passed Eddie Robinson to become the winningest coach in college football history.

Penn State took on Illinois annually from 2005 to 2015, but the series was discontinued due to the Big Ten’s divisional realignment that coincided with Rutgers and Maryland joining the conference. The team won three of its final four meetings with the Fighting Illini as part of the annual series.

The Nittany Lions came out victorious by a score of 39-0 during the teams’ last meeting in 2015 at Beaver Stadium. Quarterback Christian Hackenberg celebrated Halloween by throwing for two touchdowns while a young freshman running back named Saquon Barkley rushed for 84 yards and scored a memorable touchdown in front of the student section.