Nebraska
Tad Stryker: Goal Line Gumption by Nebraska’s Defense vs. Rutgers
In Nebraska, where no one-score win is ugly, getting a stop when you absolutely need to get one is a reason to celebrate.
The Cornhusker defense did that in the final two minutes to nail down a 14-7 win over Rutgers in a classic brutal November-style Big Ten slugfest that occurred on possibly the hottest day in the history of Memorial Stadium, where it was 97 degrees at kickoff on the first Saturday of October with a blast furnace wind blowing through the old ballpark.
Upperclassmen like Ty Robinson, Nash Hutmacher, Marques Buford and DeShon Singleton made the big plays for Nebraska when they needed them, and so did youngsters like James Williams, who had five tackles, including two sacks for the Big Red.
The 5-1 Huskers proved they still aren’t capable of stringing four solid quarters of adequate offensive football together, but the Blackshirts held the conference’s best running back in check, still haven’t given up a rushing touchdown this season and staged a heroic goal line stand in the third quarter that swung the game in Nebraska’s favor.
Leading 14-0 at halftime despite allowing 65 rushing yards to Kyle Monangai gave the Huskers a world of good when their Dylan Raiola and the offense swooned in the second half. But handing Rutgers its first Big Ten loss wasn’t easy.
The Blackshirts found themselves in a precarious position when the latest in a depressing series of special-teams gaffes — the Scarlet Knights’ second blocked punt of the game — gave Rutgers the ball at the Husker 2-yard line with 7:50 remaining in the third quarter. But the Huskers gang-tackled Monangai for a three-yard loss, which seemed to set the tone for the rest of the series. Although a holding penalty in the end zone on Singleton gave the Knights new life at the 2-yard line, the Blackshirts stopped Monangai twice more and Singleton tackled Kenny Fletcher for a one-yard loss on a quick pass before Buford slammed the door by knocking down a fourth-down pass near the goal line.
Red zone tenacity and third-down stoutness (Rutgers converted only two of 14) were vital in this tussle that very likely had more than one Husker fan thinking that his team had just won an Iowa-style victory as he wearily trudged toward his vehicle at dusk.
It was probably even uglier than an Iowa win (but possibly not as ugly as an Alabama loss to Vanderbilt) when you consider that Rutgers wideout Ben Black, who caught an 11-yard scoring pass with 3:40 remaining in the game, really should have had two touchdowns. He dropped a surefire six points earlier in the fourth quarter when Buford fell down in coverage on Black’s deep pass route. But Big Ten games sometimes turn on things like that, or on possibly coach Matt Rhule’s best decision of the day, taking the wind in the fourth quarter instead of the third.
Then there was Brian Buschini, who unleashed a critically important, wind-aided 69-yard punt with 2:28 to go that forced Rutgers to start its final drive at its own 11-yard line. And then it was up to the Blackshirts, who remembered that they allowed quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis to lead Minnesota to a game-winning touchdown on the final drive in the 2023 season opener. This time, they shut him down on four consecutive misfires, with Williams making a hit on Kaliakmanis to force an incompletion on the Knights’ last-gasp fourth-down play.
Kaliakmanis had a rough time of it for most of the day, completing just 15 of 37 passes for 186 yards with one TD and two interceptions (by Buford and Ceyair Wright). Raiola did no better. In easily his worst effort of his young career, the true freshman completed 13 of 27 passes for 134 yards and no touchdowns, with one interception, and got very little help from a Husker running game that disappeared completely in the fourth quarter and netted less than 100 yards for the game.
After his excellent first half, Monangai got just 13 more rushing yards on nine second-half carries and finished with 78.
Buschini, who had two punts blocked and for a moment looked seriously injured after the Scarlet Knights roughed him up on the first one, singlehandedly lifted an otherwise spotty Nebraska special teams performance out of the doldrums. He pinned Rutgers at its own 5-yard line with a well-placed 41-yard punt that rolled out of bounds. The senior even completed a 30-yard pass to Jalen Lloyd on a fake punt, but not even that could jumpstart the Husker offense in the second half.
Nebraska had only four first downs the entire second half as Raiola and his offensive line looked completely baffled by the Rutgers defense.
If you called Buschini the game’s hero, you wouldn’t have gotten much of an argument from Rhule.
“I’m proud of the guys, proud of the team, and Buschini was an all-star again today,” Rhule said.
Buschini needs some help on special teams. The upcoming bye week would be a good time to figure it out.
At midseason, special teams coordinator Ed Foley is playing “whack-a-mole.” Whether it’s poor snaps on field goals, poor coverage by his punt gunners or getting punts blocked, something new comes up almost each week. Nebraska’s kicking game is a net drag on the team, although Nebraska’s steady plus-one performance in turnover margin has usually been enough to offset it.
On offense, the most surprising stat of the season’s first half is that tight end Thomas Fidone doesn’t have a single touchdown catch. Fidone caught three passes for just 15 yards and no big plays Saturday. He and Raiola had an awkward exchange on the second of Nebraska’s three consecutive three-and-outs in the fourth quarter. Fidone was open for the first down on a third-and-six play from deep in his own territory, but the usually accurate Raiola delivered the ball at about knee level to the lanky Council Bluffs native, who stooped over but couldn’t get a grip on a ball that probably should be considered catchable. It’s October, and the two really haven’t developed a good rhythm, which is costing the offense a lot of consistency.
With one major stumble against Illinois, it’s been the defense which has carried Nebraska through the first half of the season and to a win over previously unbeaten Rutgers, which although ugly, has the Huskers tied for fifth in the Big Ten, and will no doubt will be a valuable possession as the season winds down.
MORE: Adam Carriker Gut Reaction: Nebraska’s One-Score Win Over Rutgers
MORE: Gallery: Huskers Hand Rutgers Its First Loss of the Season
MORE: The Turning Point: Nebraska vs. Rutgers
WATCH: Matt Rhule and Players, Rutgers Postgame Press Conference
MORE: I-80 Club: Nebraska Wins a One-Score Game, Moves to 5-1
Stay up to date on all things Huskers by bookmarking Nebraska Cornhuskers On SI, subscribing to HuskerMax on YouTube, and visiting HuskerMax.com daily.
Emma Bullerman is spending her summer riding around in fields with her dad, and she’s thrilled about it. It’s not just for fun, either — she’s interning for the Prairie Plains Resource Institute and working alongside her father to conserve Nebraska grasslands.
“Prairie Plains has literally been in my life since I was born. I guess you could say I’m a bit of a grasslands nepo baby,” Bullerman said. “My dad is the restoration director, so even as a kid I would be out helping him in the field.”
Today, Emma is taking a more active role in aiding her dad’s work to restore native prairies.
“A lot of my summer will be in the truck with him driving across Nebraska to collect the native grassland seeds that we put into our restoration sites,” she said. “Basically, I’m just learning the ropes of everything that goes into grassland restoration.”
As a teen, Bullerman thought she wanted to do anything but follow her dad’s footsteps. Eventually, a few stalled paths helped her rediscover her love for her hometown.
“In high school and coming into college, I really thought I wanted to leave Nebraska and do something totally different from my dad,” she said. “I tried a few other directions, but pretty quickly could tell that I wasn’t passionate about them. I took a semester off, and then my boss at Prairie Plains reached out about helping with social media.”
It didn’t take long for Bullerman to catch the bug for conservation work and switch her major to fisheries and wildlife, the same degree program her father graduated from in 1995. In fact, she is a fourth-generation Husker with strong ties to ag and food science. Her grandfather is Dr. Lloyd Bullerman, a former a professor of food science, microbiology and food safety at the university, and her aunt studied food science at NU as well.
Getting back to Prairie Plains in her early college years helped Bullerman realize that she, too, had a calling toward this field.
“Being out in the field with my dad one day, I had a moment where I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been looking for. This is what I want to do.’ Finding my way back has been really, really beautiful.”
Working with her dad, she’s is feeling better than ever about her direction, her hometown and her future in Nebraska.
“Doing this work and studying at UNL has given me a whole new perspective on the state,” she said. “I used to be someone who was like, ‘I want to get out of here after I graduate.’ Restoring prairies and traveling all over Nebraska has helped me see that it’s so beautiful here, I just didn’t take the time to see it before.”
The future of data centers in Nebraska took center stage at a North Omaha town hall Thursday evening.
The event was hosted by State Sens. Terrell McKinney and Ashlei Spivey, who alongside Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh sponsored a bill in the Nebraska Legislature that looked to help regulate data centers.
Parts of their bill were adopted and passed in LB1010, which requires reports on annual power usage, water usage and ownership.
“Having this passed in a package showed a lot of bipartisan work,” Spivey told a crowd of attendees at Nelson Mandela Elementary School.
The proposed regulations were shaped in part by Bold Nebraska, an advocacy group focused on eminent domain and clean energy. Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and founder of Bold Nebraska, said before the bill passed there were “zero laws on the books” to address a boom in data centers.
“If one is coming into the community, we wanted to make sure that there were some basic transparency things in place,” Kleeb said.
Political discussions around data centers heated up in recent months following reporting by the Flatwater Free Press that showed Google is considering a data center in Nebraska that could require more than three times the amount of power the entire city of Lincoln uses at peak demand in the summer.
The Nebraska Legislature recently passed another bill, LB1261, that allows private developers to build and own power plants to serve a large industrial customer, including data centers. That bill was proposed by the governor’s office and celebrated by Gov. Jim Pillen.
“Our state is once again taking a bold and strategic step – one that will create an environment that attracts business and multibillion dollar investment, while legally preserving Nebraska’s unique and consumer-friendly public power model,” Pillen said at the time.
At Thursday’s town hall, McKinney called LB1261 “the bogeyman bill.”
“It’s a bill that the governor pushed through the legislature to allow for data centers to create their own power,” McKinney said. “It’s a bill that I stood on the floor and said this is going to harm our communities.”
LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – Hundreds of people are without power in southeast Nebraska after a severe storm passed through Thursday morning.
The Lincoln Electric System outage map showed 115 customers without power across the city at 11:36 a.m.
Norris Public Power District’s outage map also shows 45 customers affected by the storm. As of 11:36 a.m., there were nine active outages.
According to the Nebraska Public Power District outage map, 657 customers were affected by the storm. Most of the affected customers were near Plattsmouth in southeast Nebraska. As of 11:37 a.m., 27 customers remain without power.
Submit your weather photos and videos below.
Click here to subscribe to our 10/11 NOW daily digest and breaking news alerts delivered straight to your email inbox.
Copyright 2026 KOLN. All rights reserved.
-
West Virginia1 minute agoWest Virginia lands commitment from coveted RB Moni Williams
-
Wyoming8 minutes agoWyoming judge strikes down ultrasound requirement, two other abortion laws – WyoFile
-
Crypto11 minutes agoMohave County Sheriffs Office Apprehends Suspect in Kingman Cryptocurrency Fraud Scheme – The Buzz -The buzz in Bullhead City – Lake Havasu City – Kingman – Arizona – California – Nevada
-
Finance23 minutes agoFed’s Barr Warns Bank Deregulation Threatens Financial Stability | PYMNTS.com
-
Fitness26 minutes agoJust four minutes of key exercise can quadruple fitness in older adults
-
Movie Reviews38 minutes agoGene Shalit, longtime Today show movie critic, dies at 100
-
World46 minutes ago
Visa denial sidelines Thomas Partey for Ghana’s World Cup opener against Panama in Toronto
-
Business1 hour agoHow Betters Use Arbitrage to Make Free Money on Kalshi and Polymarket
