Tag: Nebraska Cornhuskers Football

The 2012 Big Ten Championship Game will be re-aired tonight on BTN

Many Wisconsin fans, including myself, are looking for any way to consume some Badger Football content, and today at 4:30 p.m. CT the Big…

Many Wisconsin fans, including myself, are looking for any way to consume some Badger Football content, and today at 4:30 p.m. CT the Big Ten Championship Game from 2012 between Nebraska and Wisconsin will be re-airing on Big Ten Network.

This game was a special one for the Badgers because they decimated the Cornhuskers 70-31. This game also included some very memorable performances from former Badgers like Montee Ball, James White, and Melvin Gordon.

Rewatching this blowout will bring back a lot of nostalgia for many fans, including myself, and is a good way to spend one of the last few Sunday nights without NFL football.

REPORT: Iowa Football cancels today’s practices as reports of season cancellation become all but official

There was initially speculation that Iowa and Nebraska may try to play in other conferences, but this morning it was also reported that I…

This morning, the Dan Patrick Show reported that the Big Ten presidents and chancellors have voted to not play the 2020 season because of growing concerns about COVID-19. In his tweet, Patrick stated that 12 of the 14 teams in Big Ten voted against having the season with the teams voting in favor being Iowa and Nebraska.

Orion Sang of the Detroit Free Press has also reported this morning that the season will be canceled for the Big Ten, and in his report, he indicated that the announcement to officially cancel the season will be sometime tomorrow.

There was initially speculation that Iowa and Nebraska may try to play in other conferences, but this morning it was also reported that Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz has canceled the 11am practice for today. This is an indicator of what we already know, that there will be no more football played in the Big Ten this season.

The announcement of the cancellation of the Iowa practice also ends any speculation that Iowa will move to another conference or play non-conference games for this season. This leaves Nebraska, a former Big 12 school, the big decision of trying to continue to play games this season.

As this news continues to spread, other Big Ten schools, like Wisconsin, will most likely cancel their practices until the official announcement comes from the Big Ten office. It is really unfortunate that this is the way the season will end for a promising Wisconsin team, but a highlight of this dark time is that it allowed players to start making drastic moves in being able to unite and represent themselves.

College Football News Preview 2020: Nebraska Cornhuskers

College Football News Preview 2020: Previewing, predicting, and looking ahead to the Nebraska Cornhuskers season with what you need to know.

College Football News Preview 2020: Previewing, predicting, and looking ahead to the Nebraska Cornhuskers season with what you need to know.

– Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak

– What You Need To Know: Offense | Defense
– Top Players | Key Players, Games, Stats
– What Will Happen, Win Total Prediction
– Schedule Analysis
– Nebraska Previews 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015

2019 Record: 5-7 overall, 3-6 in Big Ten
Head Coach: Scott Frost, 3rd year, 9-15
2019 CFN Final Opinion Ranking: 73
2019 CFN Final Season Formula Ranking: 93
2019 CFN Preview Ranking: 42

No one knows what’s going to happen to the 2020 college football season. We’ll take a general look at where each team stands – doing it without spring ball to go by – while crossing our fingers that we’ll all have some well-deserved fun this fall. Hoping you and yours are safe and healthy.

5. College Football News Preview 2020: Nebraska Cornhuskers Offense 3 Things To Know

– When is this whole offense thing going to kick in? It scored 34 fewer points than the 2018 version, it finished an okay fifth in the Big Ten overall, and it actually ran well – going for over 200 yards per game – but it wasn’t a differentiating factor.

It needs a jolt of confidence. It needs to know it can close out games and come through in the clutch. That comes with experience, and that comes with getting almost the entire starting group back … sort of.

CFN in 60 Video: Nebraska Cornhuskers Preview
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– Good freaking luck trying to figure out the Nebraska receiving corps. Leading receiver JD Spielman left the team for personal reasons. The hope is that he’ll be back – and he’s the main man if and when it his – but it’s been a strange and murky situation since he left in early March.

Wan’Dale Robinson could grow into a good, veteran No. 1 target if Spielman isn’t back, and he’ll need to be that with the freshmen about to take over. With all the receiver talent coming in, five wideouts hit the transfer portal. Fortunately, the young guys should be fantastic.

6-4, 225-pound JUCO transfer Omar Manning and star freshman Zavier Betts will soon be the stars of the show, Marcus Fleming will be a factor, and Alante Brown can fly.

Now they need Adrian Martinez to grow into the type of quarterback who can make them all blow up.

Noah Vedral is now at Rutgers, and Andrew Bunch is transferring out. That leaves Luke McCaffrey as the main backup behind Martinez, who has been fine, but hardly the program-changing talent to make the Scott Frost offensive machine go. When he’s on, he can take over a game by himself. Now he has to be on a whole lot more.

– Don’t get too caught up in the numbers when it comes to the Husker O line – it was fine. Martinez takes sacks because he runs a whole lot – Nebraska was last in the Big Ten in tackles for loss allowed – but the front five does need to be more consistent for the ground game. All five starters are expected back around all-star senior Brenden Jaimes at left tackle.

Martinez is the team’s most dangerous runner, but former Georgia Tech star Dedrick Mills led the way with 745 yards and ten touchdowns. He’s the featured back, receiver Wan’Dale Robinson will get his share of carries – he finished third on the team in rushing yards.

However, Robinson might be needed more at his day job as a top target, and Maurice Washington transferred out. The job is open for a No. 2  back, with redshirt freshman Rahmir Johnson and new recruit Sevion Morrison getting the longest looks.

NEXT: College Football News Preview 2020: Nebraska Cornhuskers Defense 3 Things To Know

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Wisconsin recruiting comparison: Nebraska

National Signing Day has come and gone and the Wisconsin Badgers have put together a fairly decent class compared to the rest of the Big Ten. In the spirit of looking at recruiting classes compared to the rest of the conference, Badgers Wire is …

National Signing Day has come and gone and the Wisconsin Badgers have put together a fairly decent class compared to the rest of the Big Ten. In the spirit of looking at recruiting classes compared to the rest of the conference, Badgers Wire is taking a look at Wisconsin’s class on a national level and a conference level. We’ll be including their national rankings and their conference rankings. Next up on our list is a newer program to the Big Ten, but one of the most storied programs to reside in the conference: Nebraska. 

While the Cornhuskers are a tradition-rich program due to many decades of success in the second half of the 20th century, that success came when they were in the Big Eight and then the Big 12 Conference as opposed to the Big Ten. The school’s administration is hoping Frost, a former quarterback at Nebraska himself, can tap into the winning ways he had at UCF and apply them to the Cornhuskers.  So far, it has not gone well at all for Frost, who has yet to win more than five games in a season during his time as head coach at Nebraska. Only in his fifth year of head coaching, Frost is trying to figure out what he can do to bring in enough recruits to turn things around, but Nebraska isn’t the type of program that is going to accept a lot more five-win seasons.

Yes, Frost will get at least two more seasons no matter what else happens, but if he doesn’t begin to show improvement in 2020, the 2021 season will be a hot-seat year. Even though Frost is family in Nebraska — and will therefore get a little extra time an outside hire would not have received – he will have to turn things around relatively soon. 

The Cornhuskers have the nation’s 20th-ranked recruiting class in 2020. They finished with the Big Ten’s No. 4 recruiting class with a player average rating of .8838. Their best player is offensive tackle Corcoran Corcoran. At 6-foot-6, 280 pounds, Corcoran (.9751) is the No. 47 player in the nation and the 4th-best offensive tackle in the class of 2020. The Badgers (.8782) have a lower per-recruit average than the Cornhuskers (.8838). The Badgers’ best player in 24/7’s composite rankings is offensive tackle Trey Wedig (.9643). The 6-foot-8, 320-pound behemoth is ranked (.0108) lower than Corcoran for the Cornhuskers. 

The position where both classes compare: cornerback. The Badgers signed Max Lofty (.8526), a 5-foot-11, 170-pound player out of Pine Creek High in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He’s the No. 86 player at his position in the country and the 9th-best player coming out of Colorado. The Cornhuskers signed Ron Delancy. At 5-foot-11 and 160 pounds, Delancy (.8551) is the nation’s 76th-best cornerback, but he’s the 124th-best player in a football recruiting hotbed: Florida. In both cases, these players are likely going to redshirt their first year and start contributing the year after.

Wisconsin decade in review: Badgers vs Nebraska

Wisconsin vs. Nebraska

As the 2019 season brings to a close another decade of college football, Badgers Wire has been engaged in a series of reflective pieces. “Record Review” is another series examining how the Badgers have fared against the rest of the Big Ten Conference this decade. Next up is an examination of the Badgers’ record against one of the more recent additions to the Big Ten, Nebraska. This is a series Wisconsin has controlled since the Cornhuskers joined the league. Let’s take a look at the numbers. 

Using Stassen, Badgers Wire pulled up every result against Nebraska in the 2010s. The vast majority of the meetings between these two teams have taken place since 2011, a direct result of Nebraska’s new Big Ten membership. Prior to the past decade, UW and NU met twice in the 1970s (1973 and ‘74), in which the two schools split, and twice in the 1960s (1965 and ‘66), both Wisconsin losses. Then they also met in 1901 in Milwaukee. So, 2011-2019 represents 64 percent of their total meetings. This decade belonged to Wisconsin against the Cornhuskers. 

The Badgers have lost only once since in the decade to Nebraska. That loss came in 2012, and they avenged it by beating the absolute hell out of Nebraska in what has been NU’s only appearance in the Big Ten Championship Game. So, as gut-wrenching as the 30-27 loss was for Wisconsin in the 2012 regular season, beating the Huskers in a conference title game more than made up for it. 

If Nebraska head coach Scott Frost has the success he had at UCF, it’s only a matter of time before the Huskers will be competing with Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota for the West Division crown. Yet, Frost hasn’t shown he can move the Nebraska program forward. Wisconsin needs to stay the course and not give ground to a Nebraska program that can recruit with the best of them when the program is firing on all cylinders. 

Wisconsin has done a great job of keeping Nebraska quiet and impotent. Maintaining that reality in the 2020s — never giving the Huskers a chance to kick-start their attempt at a revival with an upset of the Badgers — is an important task for UW football.

Big Ten, big ’20s: Nebraska football

Nebraska football in the 2020s

When considering the biggest question facing Nebraska Cornhuskers football in the 2020s, the focus naturally shifts to Scott Frost. Will the favored son, the people all Husker fans loved for a long time, be the man who can turn around the program?

It is true that Nebraska fans will embrace a revival no matter how it comes, but it would obviously mean so much more if the Huskers can return to prominence under Frost, whose return to Lincoln a few years ago was met with universal enthusiasm — not just because he had just conquered college football at UCF, but because he was a Nebraska man who played for a national championship team under Tom Osborne and therefore represents a strong connection to Nebraska’s glory days. Emotion, nostalgia, sentimentality, and coaching quality (at UCF) were all part of the euphoria felt in the Nebraska community when Mama called, and Frost came home.

Here we are, two seasons into the Frost era, and Nebraska hasn’t yet made a bowl game under Frost. Moreover, Nebraska didn’t make a bowl game this year even though Northwestern and Purdue endured brutal seasons in the Big Ten West. What happens when the Wildcats and Boilermakers improve, as they almost surely will? Plus, Minnesota now seems to be a factor in the Big Ten West, another impediment to Nebraska’s rise. Nebraska’s ceiling is, at least at the moment, very low.

How will Frost raise that ceiling? One answer comes from Parrish Walton, who said on a podcast with me that Nebraska needs to recruit the state of Ohio better and get the kinds of players Ohio State doesn’t want. Kentucky has been getting a number of those players to stay relevant (and a bowl team) in the SEC. Nebraska, Walton says, would do well to adjust its recruiting strategy in that and other ways.

That ultimately leads me to the central question for Nebraska football entering the 2020s: It’s not so much whether Frost himself leads a revival; it’s more about whether a revival will happen under any coach or any set of circumstances. The key is finding a recruiting formula which works.

Ever since the move from the Big 12 to the Big Ten, Nebraska’s recruiting in the state of Texas has fallen off. Nebraska wasn’t competing with Texas A&M or Texas for recruits anymore. Finding the right path in recruiting and getting better “dudes” is the key challenge the Cornhuskers need to respond to if they want happy days to return to Lincoln, under Scott Frost or anyone else.

Great Wisconsin moments of the 2010s: 2015 Nebraska

Wisconsin-Nebraska 2015

Beating Minnesota yet again in 2015 — continuing what was then a 12-game winning streak over the Golden Gophers — certainly rated as a big highlight of Wisconsin’s 2015 season, the first under Paul Chryst. The best win might have been over USC in the Holiday Bowl, a game we looked at as part of our bowl memories series at Badgers Wire.

Yet, if one was to identify the most important win of the year — at least in terms of giving the program a continued sense of stability, something Badger fans have come to count on ever since Barry Alvarez established a true foothold — the win at Nebraska is probably the best answer.

Remember the 2012 season, the last one under Bret Bielema? That 2012 team did lose a bunch of games, but it wasn’t a 6-6 team which missed out on the Big Ten Championship Game in a year when Ohio State wasn’t eligible for postseason play. Wisconsin took advantage of the opportunity other Big Ten teams could have pounced on, but didn’t. That Wisconsin team found a measure of stability by beating Utah State early in the season. We noted that Wisconsin had just lost a 10-7 game to Oregon State and needed a confidence boost.

What might have happened if the Badgers hadn’t beaten Utah State in 2012? One shudders to think of the answer. It was similar in 2015 with the Nebraska game.

The week before going to Lincoln, Wisconsin lost 10-6 at home to Iowa, the team which would make its only Big Ten Championship Game appearance to date on the strength of that victory in Madison. Wisconsin might not have won the Big Ten West in 2015 had it beaten Nebraska, but in terms of maintaining the Barry Alvarez Wisconsin standard in Paul Chryst’s first season, that road trip to Lincoln was immensely important.

It was hardly an easy ride. Wisconsin was outrushed, 196-147. Joel Stave threw 50 (!) passes and completed only 24. Kicker Rafael Gaglianone missed two field goals… but he made the one that counted, a clutch 46-yard boot with 1:03 left for a 23-21 lead. The defense was able to thwart Nebraska in the final minute and preserve the kind of win which tells a first-year coach, “Hey, my kids will go to the wall for me. We got this.”

A total of 50 months have come and gone since that game. Paul Chryst has Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl and a very solid place. Yes, I’d say 2015 Nebraska was a darn important game in the past decade of Badger football.

Great Wisconsin moments from the 2010s: 2011 Nebraska

The 2011 Wisconsin-Nebraska game

We already wrote about the 2011 Big Ten Championship Game here at Badgers Wire, recalling the first time the Big Ten moved to two divisions and played a neutral-site conference championship showdown in Indianapolis. Russell Wilson starred in that game, the biggest win of Wisconsin’s 2011 season. The victory sent the Badgers to the Rose Bowl, where they played the Oregon Ducks.

Hey, that sounds familiar. Wisconsin will do that all over again when it reunites with Oregon in the 2020 Rose Bowl.

On the road to Pasadena, Wisconsin needed to beat Michigan State in Indianapolis. Before that, however, the other especially great moment from the 2011 UW regular season was Nebraska’s first-ever conference game as a member of the Big Ten.

Nebraska lost to Oklahoma in the 2010 Big 12 Championship Game. Nebraska’s next conference game was in Camp Randall Stadium roughly 10 months later, on October 1, 2011. This wasn’t an ease-your-way-into-the-Big-Ten opener for Nebraska, against Illinois or pre-Jeff-Brohm Purdue. This was Wisconsin, the Big Ten co-champion from 2010 which was reloading and would eventually put two players — Russell Wilson and Montee Ball — in the top 10 of the Heisman Trophy voting for the 2011 season.

This was a sexy game played under the lights in prime time. How would Nebraska answer the moment, and how would Wisconsin welcome the new member of the Big Ten?

After 17 and a half minutes, Nebraska had to like its chances. The Huskers survived the early storm and took a 14-7 lead with 12:45 left before halftime. It was reasonable at that time to expect a closely fought game. Nebraska was the runner-up in the Big 12 in 2010. This was not the NU program we see today under Scott Frost; the Huskers weren’t an elite team, but they were very good at the start of the decade.

In many ways, this game contained powerful symbolism as a harbinger of what was to come: The roof caved in.

Wisconsin scored 20 points in the second quarter to take a 27-14 lead. Nebraska quarterback Taylor Martinez threw three interceptions to fuel the Badgers’ surge. Wilson, in the first really big game of his Wisconsin career after transferring from North Carolina State, didn’t throw a ton of passes (20), but the ones he completed were big gainers. Wilson’s 14 completions went for 255 yards, or just over 18 yards per completion. Wilson hit Jared Abbrederis on a 36-yard touchdown pass, and Nick Toon on a 46-yard scoring strike, to blow the game open. Before the third quarter was over, Wisconsin had built a 41-14 lead. The Badgers had scored 34 straight points. Nebraska’s Big Ten opener had turned into a clear and vivid sign of what was to come in the remainder of the decade for the Cornhuskers.

In the fourth quarter of the blowout — the final score was 48-17 — Wisconsin fans serenaded Nebraska with a simple chant. It didn’t need to be any more complicated:

“BIG TEN FOOT-BALL! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP-CLAP-CLAP!”

“BIG TEN FOOT-BALL! CLAP CLAP! CLAP-CLAP-CLAP!”

That was a mic-drop moment for Wisconsin football, part of a very successful decade for the Badgers on the gridiron.

Why Wisconsin fans shouldn’t worry about the Nebraska performance

An explanation of why fans of the Wisconsin Badgers should put the performance against the Nebraska Cornhuskers in perspective.

Yes, the Wisconsin Badgers played below-average defense against the Nebraska Cornhuskers on Saturday. Yes, the Badgers’ defense is thin at safety, due to multiple injuries. Yes, backups are being thrown into the mix and can’t be expected to perform at the same standard established earlier in the season. Yes, other Big Ten teams seem to be improving while Wisconsin is treading water — surviving, but not really getting better.

Wisconsin’s best and most locked-in performances of 2019 came in the first half of the season. The second half — which included a week off, a time to hopefully sharpen some instincts and polish some imperfect habits — has not created a meaner defensive unit. Jack Coan is not making steady progress. He is also playing at the same B-minus/C-plus level he displayed against Illinois a few weeks ago. This team isn’t deteriorating, but neither is it peaking at the right time.

That last point is what I wish to explore: No, Wisconsin isn’t peaking… and that is part of why fans shouldn’t be too worried about what’s happening at the moment, two weeks before the huge Minnesota game which is likely to decide the Big Ten West. I will frame my argument around a larger reality which pervades the national scene in major college football.

Look at Georgia’s mid-October siesta, when the Bulldogs played two bad games in a row against South Carolina and Kentucky. Look at Ohio State basically taking the last three quarters off against Rutgers on Saturday. (Rutgers nearly played OSU even on the scoreboard for a few quarters, following OSU’s onslaught in the first 11 minutes.) Look at LSU giving up a ton of points to Ole Miss and a boatload of yards. Look at Clemson playing like a bored team in the first half of the year, especially versus North Carolina.

So many very good teams have played games or sequences of games (or both) in which they weren’t dialed in. Focus was lacking. Energy was inconsistent. This happens. This is NORMAL, not aberrational. Kids aren’t going to have the same razor-sharp focus every week.

Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney are better than most at getting relatively consistent performances from their teams each week, but they aren’t airtight gods. They still get at least one if not two games a year in which their players drift through a Saturday.

This, I submit, is what Wisconsin is going through now. Wisconsin was shaken by the Illinois loss and then kicked to the curb by Ohio State. This created an emotional tidal wave the Badgers are still absorbing. This team played with such confidence and decisiveness in the first half of the season that a two-game losing streak was a thunderclap of disruption. Wisconsin is still trying to find its bearings, and not being able to control its fate in the Big Ten West race might have played a small but real part in keeping this team depressed — maybe not to a huge extent, but small margins can matter when explaining why one-on-one tackles in open space are being missed instead of made.

Now that Wisconsin controls its fate in the Big Ten West once again, you might see this team perk up. You might see the vibrant, optimistic, relentless identity seen in September. It’s not a guarantee, but I think some Badgers are ready to come out of hibernation. Let’s see if this thesis is proven to be correct. If it IS correct, some Gophers are about to be pushed into a deep, dark hole on Nov. 30 in Minneapolis.

Twitter reactions: Wisconsin takes down Nebraska 37-21

Here are some of the most notable Twitter reactions from the Wisconsin Badgers’ 37-21 victory over the Nebraska Cornhuskers in Madison.

It wasn’t easy by any stretch, but No. 14 Wisconsin ultimately took care of business and earned its seventh straight victory over Nebraska, taking down the Cornhuskers 37-21 yesterday afternoon in Lincoln. As a result, the 8-2 Badgers remain in the hunt for a Big Ten West title with two games left to go.

The events that took place at Memorial Stadium yesterday elicited a flood of reactions and takes throughout the Twitterverse, both during the game and after. Here are some of the most notable:

With its confidence back after last week’s thrilling victory over Iowa in Madison, Wisconsin appeared to be in high spirits in pre-game warmups.

However, that mood didn’t last long.

After marching down the field with ease into Nebraska territory on their first drive of the game, Jack Coan threw an errant pass to Jonathan Taylor out of the backfield. The All-American running back managed to haul it in with a sensational one-handed grab, but just couldn’t hang on and got the ball knocked out. Nebraska recovered and quickly seized the game’s momentum, going up 7-0 on Wisconsin after running back Dedrick Mills’ 12-yard touchdown run.

Unfortunately for the Cornhuskers, Wisconsin kick returner Aron Cruickshank immediately took the wind out of their sails on the ensuing kickoff, taking the kick all the way back for an electrifying 89-yard touchdown and tying up the game once more. It was the speedy sophomore’s first return touchdown of his career, and likely will not be the last.

While Wisconsin would end up claiming victory, many Badger fans are understandably concerned about the performance of this defense moving forward. It gave up a total of 493 yards against the Cornhuskers, the most the Badgers have allowed since the 511 it gave up in last season’s matchup with Nebraska at Camp Randall. Most concerning were the 273 yards it gave up on the ground, including a whopping 188 on just 17 carries from Mills.

A key factor in the defense’s woes yesterday? Missed tackles. A lot of them.

Overall, the unit’s performance was reminiscent of its awful outings against Illinois and Ohio State, a major red flag with the regular-season finale against Minnesota that will likely decide the Big Ten West looming

The next major galvanizing moment from the Badgers following Cruickshank’s touchdown return came about midway through the second quarter. Down 14-10 after a 5-play, 73-yard touchdown drive from the Cornhuskers, Coan hit A.J. Taylor over the middle on an easy pass. The senior wide receiver proceeded to break multiple tackles and scamper all the way into the end zone. At 55 yards, it was the longest pass play for Wisconsin on the year, and it gave the Badgers the lead for good in this one.

Taylor’s reception was part of a broader effort from Paul Chryst and offensive coordinator Joe Rudolph to get their weapons at wide receiver more involved in the offense this week, both to discourage Nebraska from loading the box against Jonathan Taylor and simply because they are talented playmakers.

Speaking of JT, he made history against the Cornhuskers by breaking the legendary Herschel Walker’s record for rushing yards in the first three years of a career on a run early in the fourth quarter.

Another week, another massive goal-line stop from this Wisconsin defense. Last week, it was Chris Orr stuffing Iowa quarterback Nate Stanley on a two-point conversion attempt late in the fourth quarter to keep the Hawkeyes down 24-22.

This week, it was Reggie Pearson’s turn. The redshirt freshman safety essentially sealed the victory for Wisconsin by making an incredible tackle on Nebraska running back Wyatt Mazour on the one-yard line on a 4th-and-goal attempt.

That was an enormous play by Pearson, who had a fantastic day overall by leading the Badgers with ten tackles. However, as usual, the day belonged to Jonathan Taylor, who racked up over 200 yards against this Nebraska program for the third straight season. He finished with 204 and two touchdowns on 25 carries, bringing his career totals against the Cornhuskers to 644 yards and seven scores.

Nebraska deserves credit for giving the Badgers quite the scare, but Wisconsin managed to close out the Cornhuskers and maintain possession of the Freedom Trophy for the seventh straight time in this rivalry.

We’ll close with this gem from Oakland Raiders linebacker Will Compton, who played at Nebraska from 2009-12 and has some thoughts on Wisconsin’s dominance of this rivalry over the years that Badger fans should enjoy.