Northwestern should give them some problems with their defense, so don’t look for the Cornhuskers to run away with this game quite so easily.
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Nebraska football is 3-0 and feeling good after squeaking out a 35-32 win against the Oregon Ducks last weekend. The Huskers hope to continue that trend when they open Big Ten play at Northwestern. Four of the last five meetings have been decided by three points or fewer, with the Wildcats beating Nebraska 30-28 in Lincoln past year. But to best prepare for it, Riley said, “We’ve let our field grow out here as best we can, and we’ll practice on the grass and try to get ready for that, but I think a lot of that will be a mindset, too”. “But I know this, and it goes back to past year when I first started playing with Ross, that he works very hard, he knows what he’s doing, he has really good technique, he has a passion for the game”.
“I think this can be one of your hardest coaching jobs, actually”. “He has played so well against us and he is a true competitor”.
“We had a good start going into that, but not great”. “We need to take that momentum and keep moving forward into Big Ten play”. If their recent history with Northwestern is any indication, their experience dealing with adversity could come in handy as the 20th-ranked Cornhuskers travel to Evanston to face the Wildcats in the Big Ten opener for both teams. Northwestern has made just six trips total, scoring three touchdowns- with two losses and a combined three points.
There were lessons learned and mistakes the Huskers don’t want to repeat, Westerkamp said.
– Offensively, however, Northwestern has averaged just 17.3 points per game, another dead-last ranking in the Big Ten, and 117th out of all 128 FBS teams. I’ve liked them from the end of a year ago, what they’ve been doing to right now. “I’m fairly confident if we continue to do what we do and prepare our tails off like we did for OR, we should have no issue going forward”.
“When you’re only this far into the season, it’s hard to say that a premier program like Nebraska is actually back”, center Dylan Utter said. And even though quarterback Tommy Armstrong Jr. has only tossed one interception through three weeks, the sample size is probably too small at this point to consider that issue to definitively be in his rearview mirror. The tide has turned somewhat this season as Northwestern lost its first two games of the season by 1 and 2 points, respectively. Now the games that matter the most are here.
Nebraska is 12-8 in Big Ten road games since joining the conference.
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Northwestern, which won 10 games last season, has gotten off to a tough start, losing to Western Michigan and FCS Illinois State and beating Duke 24-13. “That just shows how well we work, how hard our team works to prove to everybody that we’re better than what we were previous year”.
