With their backs against the wall and the crumbling reality of a successful 2024 season starting to unravel, the Nebraska Cornhuskers football team stepped up, pushing No. 4 Ohio State to the brink with a stingy defense and a hunger to create a shocker in the college football world. 

Unfortunately, the Huskers’ morning matchup against the Buckeyes ended in a 21-17 loss with a game-sealing interception of freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola with 1:16 left near midfield. However, the impression was felt and Nebraska created momentum going into a four-game stretch that will come to define its season with either disappointment or playing in the postseason. 

Here’s all you need to know as the Huskers battle for bowl eligibility. 

How to Follow Along 

• Matchup: Nebraska (5-3, 2-3 B1G) vs UCLA (2-5, 1-4 B1G)
• Line: Nebraska (-6.5), 40.5 O/U (BetMGM) 
• Where: Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, NE
• Time: 2:30 p.m. CDT 
• TV: Big Ten Network
• Broadcast Crew: Guy Haberman (PxP), Yogi Roth (Color) & Rhett Lewis (Sideline) 
• Radio: Huskers Radio Network and Affiliates

UCLA Scout

Head Coach: DeShaun Foster | 1st season | 2-5 UCLA Record | Former Bruin RB who’s second all-time with 44 touchdowns and third on the all-time rushing list with 3,194 yards. 

2023 Record: 8-5 (4-5 Pac-12, T-7th)  | One Consensus All-American | Pac-12 Pat Tillman Defensive Player of the Year | One All-Pac-12 First Team selection, Two All-Pac-12 Second Team selections, Six All-Pac-12 Honorable Mentions | 35-22 win over Boise State in LA Bowl. 

All-Time Series: Nebraska leads 7-6 (2015 Foster Farms Bowl last meeting, 37-29 NU).

Fun Fact: There are plenty of connections between this Husker coaching staff and UCLA. Head coach Matt Rhule was an assistant with the Bruins in 2001 when Bruin head coach DeShaun Foster was a senior. Plus, NU defensive coordinator Tony White was teammates with Foster for three seasons from 1998 to 2000. 

Key Returners: TJ Harden, RB, Jr. | Ethan Garbers, QB, R-Sr. | Keegan Jones, RB, R-Sr. | Molokai Matavao, TE, Sr. | Logan Loya, WR, R-Sr. | J. Michael Sturdivant, WR, R-Jr. | Carson Schwesinger, LB, R-Jr. | Kain Medrano, LB, R-Sr. | Oluwafemi Oladejo, LB, Sr. | Siale Taupaki, DL, R-Sr. | Spencer Holstege, OG, R-Sr. | Josh Carlin, OL, R-Sr. | Garrett DiGiorgio, OL, R-Jr.

Key Additions: Jalen Berger, RB, R-Sr. (Michigan State) | Rico Flores Jr., WR (Notre Dame) | Bryan Addison, DB, R-Sr. (Oregon) | KJ Wallace, DB, R-Sr. (Georgia Tech) | Ramon Henderson, DB, R-Sr. (Notre Dame) | Kaylin Moore, DB, Sr. (California). 

Key Departures: Laiatu Latu, DE (Indianapolis Colts, No. 15 Overall) | Darius Muasau, LB (New York Giants, 6th Round) | Dante Moore, QB (Oregon) | Carson Steele, RB (Eligibility) | Kyle Ford, WR (USC) | Carsen Ryan, TE (Utah) | Kenny Churchwell III, DB (Eligibility) | Kamari Ramsey, DB (USC) | Carl Jones Jr., DL (Eligibility) | Gabriel Murphy, DL (Eligibility) | Grayson Murphy, LB (Eligibility) | Bruna Fina, OT (Duke) | Duke Clemens, C (Eligibility).  

Outlook: UCLA was put into a tough position with the departure of former head coach Chip Kelly, who took his offensive mind to Columbus to become the offensive coordinator for his former quarterback Ryan Day at Ohio State. Kelly did a decent job with the Bruins, collecting at least eight wins in his final three seasons, but the vibe and connection between Kelly and the program wasn’t there. Reportedly, boosters weren’t thrilled with his approach and the embracement of NIL was lackluster. 

To bridge that gap to boosters and fans, the UCLA administration hired one of their own in running backs coach DeShaun Foster, who is one of the school’s top tailbacks in history and brings a more youthful energy to the program. The first-year coach sought experience in his coaching staff and did so in hiring Eric Bieniemy as the OC and Associate Head Coach. Bieniemy made his name known with Andy Reid and the Kansas City Chiefs as its offensive coordinator. 

And despite Foster’s background, the Bruins have leaned into the passing game behind returning starter Ethan Garbers, who’s passed for 1,484 yards this season, but that’s with more interceptions (9) than touchdowns (8). The passing game is 60th in the country with 237.6 yards per game, which is respectable, but everything else falls short. UCLA is last in the Big Ten and 133rd in the country with 64.6 rushing yards per game, and that’s not even mentioning that the Blackshirts are one of the top rushing defenses in the nation, allowing only 98 yards per game which ranks 12th in the country. 

Returning back TJ Harden rushed for over 800 yards last season while sharing the backfield with future NFL running back Carson Steele, but the junior only has 180 yards on 62 carries this season with only one score. Although, he’s been effective in the passing game with a team-leading 26 receptions and 238 yards. Second-year Oregon transfer tight end Moliki Matavao has been Garbers’ safety blanket with a team-high 251 yards on 20 receptions. 

Redshirt junior linebacker Carson Schwesinger is the leader of the Bruins defense with 72 tackles on the season, which is 32 more than second-place Kain Medrano with 40. Schwesinger’s tackle tally is third-highest in the conference while also contributing 6.5 tackles for loss and a pair of sacks. UCLA has sorely missed the contributions of NFL first-round draft pick Laiatu Latu who recorded more sacks (13.0) last season than the Bruins have right now (10.0) as a team. That figure is last in the league while UCLA is 16th in the conference in interceptions with four. 

Sitting at 2-5, it’s hard to envision the Bruins knocking off a Husker team hungry and desperate to earn its first bowl berth since 2016. Ultimately, the team who has better production passing the ball should come out on top, and that should favor Nebraska and Dylan Raiola, despite the downturn in performance since entering conference play. Malcolm Hartzog being ruled out for Saturday and Tommi Hill still being gimpy hurts NU, but one of the key storylines this season has been the emergence of depth in the secondary and that will be tested this week. There’s a good reason why Nebraska is the favorite. If the Huskers don’t psych themselves out, and play like they did against No. 4 Ohio State last week, Nebraska will enjoy the postseason for the first time in eight seasons. 

MORE: Female Nebraska Husker Athletes, Led by Jordy Bahl, Featured in Political Ad

MORE: Big Ten Football Game of the Week: No. 3 Penn State vs. No. 4 Ohio State

MORE: SMQ Invades California for Nebraska’s UCLA/USC Takedowns!

MORE: Husker Dan Ponders If Nebraska Football Will Get Bowl Eligible Against UCLA

MORE: McMaster’s Big Ten Football Power Rankings After Week 9

Stay up to date on all things Huskers by bookmarking Nebraska Cornhuskers On SI, subscribing to HuskerMax on YouTube, and visiting HuskerMax.com daily.

LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska last won a football game with bowl eligibility at stake on Oct. 15, 2016.

Observers of that 27-22 win at Indiana for the 10th-ranked Huskers paid no mind to the fact Nebraska qualified for the postseason. After all, it would mark a ninth consecutive bowl bid and 46th in 48 seasons.

Nebraska finished with nine wins in 2016 for coach Mike Riley and lost 38-24 against Tennessee in the Music City Bowl. For the Volunteers, Joshua Dobbs accounted for 409 yards and four touchdowns.

Dobbs is now 29 and playing for his eighth NFL franchise. Nebraska’s starting quarterback in that bowl game, Ryker Fyfe, is 30.

The eight-year absence for Nebraska from the college football postseason is the longest among Power 4 teams and tied for second longest among programs that have played at the FBS level since 2016. (Of note, Colorado had not achieved bowl eligibility since 2016 until this year, but the Buffaloes elected to play in a bowl game in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season; Nebraska did not.)

Alabama has appeared in the College Football Playoff six times since Nebraska last played in a bowl game.

Only UMass and Louisiana-Monroe, absent from the postseason since 2012, are riding longer droughts. And watch out because the Warhawks are 5-2 ahead of a trip to Marshall (4-3) this week.

Nebraska sits at 5-3 as two-win UCLA visits Memorial Stadium on Saturday for a 2:30 p.m. CT clash. The most recent of 13 games between the Huskers and Bruins also marks Nebraska’s last bowl victory — 37-29 in the 2015 Foster Farms Bowl.

Since 2017, the Huskers are 0-7 in games that could have earned them a sixth victory and a bowl bid. They’re 0-6, in fact, under second-year coach Matt Rhule, including losses in the past two weeks at Ohio State and Indiana.

Nebraska players recognize that another win would achieve a milestone.

“It would mean a lot,” freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola said.

But Rhule isn’t talking to his team this week about the shot to get bowl eligible. He said he thought the Huskers last year in November, in losing four consecutive games by a combined 16 points, were “chasing something.”

It added pressure. A similar mindset contributed to their lack of aggressiveness two weeks ago in the stunning 56-7 loss at Indiana. But against Ohio State last week, in falling 21-17, Rhule saw a change. The Huskers were “playing to play,” he said.

He expects the same against UCLA.

“We have to redeem our name,” Rhule said. “We have to play for pride and play with heart and character. That’s what you saw (at Ohio State). I won’t talk about anything other than that this week.”

Here’s a list of the five highest moments and the five lowest for Nebraska since it last played in a bowl game.

The high moments

1. The hirings of Scott Frost and Matt Rhule. Athletic director Bill Moos unveiled the news about Frost on Dec. 2, 2017, eight days after Riley’s final game, a 56-14 loss at Iowa. It was much hyped over the previous month as Frost rose to national prominence at UCF in 2017. The return to Nebraska of its former championship-winning QB rated a joyous moment for Husker Nation.

Nebraska publicly introduced Rhule on Nov. 28, 2022, two days after the school announced his hire during ESPN’s “College GameDay” on Thanksgiving weekend. The event to welcome Rhule, an eloquent speaker on that Monday, was held on the practice field at the Hawks Championship Center. It inspired hope among long-suffering fans.

2. The 2022 win at Iowa. It wasn’t for bowl eligibility, but victory felt even sweeter for Nebraska as it beat Iowa 24-17 to deny the Hawkeyes a Big Ten West title and snap a seven-game skid in the series. Casey Thompson and Trey Palmer teamed up to torch the Iowa secondary, and Nebraska held off a furious comeback attempt as interim coach Mickey Joseph, the former Nebraska QB who took over for Frost, finished on a celebratory note.

3. The 2024 win against Colorado. Amid high hopes at the start of this season, Nebraska played above expectations in beating the rival Buffs for the first time since 2010. A sense of pent-up anger filled all of Lincoln before kickoff. The nature of the 28-10 win turned Memorial Stadium into a party venue when Tommi Hill intercepted Shedeur Sanders and walked into the end zone for a pick six as Nebraska built a four-touchdown lead in the first half.

GO DEEPER

In exposing Colorado, Nebraska looked like a program on the rise. Can Deion fix Buffs’ woes?

4. The 2018 opener that never happened. A high moment until the rain and thunder refused to leave. Nebraska was set to host Akron on Sept. 1 in the highly anticipated debut for Frost as the Huskers’ head coach. The electric atmosphere rivaled the feeling inside Memorial Stadium before Nebraska played Miami in 2014. But after the opening kickoff, both teams left the field and never returned. The game was canceled. The night started with such big-event excitement but ended in unprecedented disappointment, a harbinger of the Frost era.

5. The 2020 win against Penn State. This was Frost’s best win. It was better than blowouts against Maryland and Northwestern. He finished 0-9 against Colorado, Wisconsin and Iowa. So yeah, this 30-23 win in the eerie, pandemic-season quiet at Memorial Stadium represented a high point. The Nittany Lions entered winless and lacked precision. Nebraska, in Luke McCaffrey’s finest moment in Lincoln, built a 27-6 lead and held off a comeback attempt led by QB Will Levis.

GO DEEPER

Nebraska hung around with Ohio State and raised its ceiling moving forward

The low moments

1. The 2022 Georgia Southern debacle. Visions of Kyle Vantrease abusing the Nebraska defense will live indefinitely in the minds of fans who attended this September mess. That is, the fans who stopped chanting “Fire Frost” long enough to watch the GSU quarterback throw for 409 yards. The Eagles rushed for five touchdowns and accumulated 642 yards, a record against Nebraska, in winning 45-42. Before the night ended, athletic director Trev Alberts rallied financial support to fire Frost. Made official one day later, the coaching move cost Nebraska some $7 million more than if Alberts had waited 20 days. But after that showing, there was no waiting left to do.

2. The 2017 Northern Illinois loss. This one effectively doomed Riley in just the third game of his third season. And it came on the heels of that nine-win campaign in 2016. After Nebraska lost at Oregon in Week 2, it came home and Tanner Lee threw a pair of first-quarter pick sixes. The Huskers bounced back to win three Big Ten games. But Riley, hired by previous AD Shawn Eichorst, could not recover from the first Nebraska loss since 2004 against a non-power conference program or major independent. Moos dropped the hammer when the season ended in November.

3. The Colorado losses in 2018 and 2019. They stung for different reasons. First, the Buffs were in no shape to beat a decent team in either year. In what turned out to be Frost’s debut in 2018 after the Akron cancellation, Nebraska led late but wilted in the 33-28 defeat when freshman QB Adrian Martinez was injured. A year later in Boulder, the Buffs won 34-31 in overtime after the Huskers built a 17-0 lead at halftime. These one-score losses stood out as extra painful among the 22 that Frost lost in 27 games decided by eight points or fewer.

4. The onside kick. Under pressure from Alberts, Frost surrendered offensive play calling ahead of the 2022 season. The coach was unhappy about it. And in the opener against Northwestern, set at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium, he called for an onside kick after the Huskers took a 28-17 lead in the third quarter. His bid to bury the Wildcats backfired. Northwestern, which went winless after the opener, capitalized on the short field to score a touchdown. It rallied to win 31-28. The glaring mistake, in Week 0 on an international stage, further eroded confidence in Frost. He lost his job two weeks later.

5. The 2024 blowout at Indiana. This one’s fresh. Rhule and the Huskers took momentum out of a bye week after their 5-1 start. Nebraska stood a chance to snap its 25-game losing streak against AP-ranked foes. Instead, it lost by 49 points, the third-largest margin in school history. First-year IU coach Curt Cignetti and the Hoosiers outmaneuvered Nebraska repeatedly in an embarrassing defeat against a program that hadn’t won more than eight games since 1967. These Hoosiers are 8-0, though, as they play at Michigan State on Saturday.

(Photo: Dylan Widger / Imagn Images)

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – This Election Day, Nebraskans will have the opportunity to weigh in on two historic and conflicting ballot measures regarding abortion access in the state.

VOTER’S GUIDE: 2024 Nebraska General Election

Initiative 434 aims to put the existing 12-week abortion ban into the state’s constitution, while Initiative 439 is trying expand abortion access up to the point of fetal viability. This is the first time that Nebraska is having two competing ballot measures.

“There’s nothing about these that can be reconciled. So whichever one of these gets the most votes is likely to become the initiative that gets adopted into the Nebraska constitution,” Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen said in April.

The Nebraska Legislature passed a 12-week abortion ban in 2023, and Initiative 434 would enshrine that into the state’s constitution but allow for abortion when necessitated by a medical emergency or when the pregnancy stems from sexual assault or incest.

Protect Women and Children is campaigning for Initiative 434.

“Initiative 434 protects laws that require parental consent before a girl under 18 can get an abortion, allowing parents to be their for our daughters. This is just common sense,” Rebecca Schwend, who supports 434, said.

Hannah Dumais, a field organizer campaigning for the conflicting Initiative 439, said the current ban is hurting women across the state.

“I personally was a woman who ended up miscarrying at 16.5 weeks and I started to miscarry, and I was sent home and had to wait until I was hemorrhaging and almost dead before I had to come back. And so I know the type of impact that it has on women from a personal standpoint,” Dumais said.

Advocates of 434 look to this as a moral necessity.

“Abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent child. That is not healthcare. How can it be called healthcare when the procedure ends in death,” Kate Leising who supports 434 said.

The initiatives will be the last thing you see on your ballot, and 434 is the first of six to vote on.

Click here to subscribe to our 10/11 NOW daily digest and breaking news alerts delivered straight to your email inbox.

Copyright 2024 KOLN. All rights reserved.