Huskers and Hurricanes Meet Under the Lights

GAME 4: NEBRASKA vs. MIAMI
SEPT. 20, 2014 | MEMORIAL STADIUM
LINCOLN, NEB. | 7 p.m. (CT)

BROADCAST INFO
TV - ESPN2
RADIO - Husker Sports Network
SATELLITE RADIO - Sirius Channel 113, XM 196
INTERNET RADIO - Huskers.com

HUSKERS
Record: 3-0, 0-0
Rankings: Coaches-22; AP-24
Last Game: def. Fresno State, 55-19
Coach: Bo Pelini
Career/NU Record: 61-24/7th year 
vs. Miami, 0-0

HURRICANES
Record: 2-1, 0-0
Rankings: Coaches-NR; AP-NR
Last Game: def. Arkansas St., 41-20
Coach: Al Golden
Career/UM Record: 51-50, 9th Season/ 24-16, 4th Season
vs. NU: 0-0

The Matchup
Two of college football’s most dominant programs meet for the first time in more than a decade on Saturday when Nebraska plays host to the Miami Hurricanes at Memorial Stadium. The matchup will be nationally televised on ESPN2 with kickoff set for shortly after 7 p.m. CDT. 

The two programs have combined for 10 national championships, including eight since 1983. Nebraska won its third national championship and first under Tom Osborne in 1994 by defeating Miami in the Orange Bowl. The 20th anniversary of that national championship will be honored in Lincoln this weekend. Miami also clinched three of its five national titles with wins over Nebraska in bowl games between 1983 and 2001.

The 2014 Huskers will look to complete non-conference play unbeaten for the first time since 2011. Nebraska improved to 3-0 on the season with a 55-19 rout of Fresno State on the road Saturday night. The Huskers showed their explosiveness in the win, recording four scoring plays of 50 yards or more.

Saturday’s game is the first of a home-and-home series with the Hurricanes. Nebraska will play at Miami on Sept. 19, 2015, to complete the two-game non-conference series.

Miami comes into the game with a 2-1 record following consecutive victories over Florida A&M and Arkansas State. The Hurricanes lost at Louisville to open the season on Labor Day. Miami comes to Lincoln having won eight consecutive regular season non-conference games.

The Series
The series between the schools is tied at five wins apiece. The schools have met six times in bowl games and four times in the regular season. Saturday’s game will be the first regular season meeting since a 17-9 victory by No. 2 Nebraska in Lincoln in 1976. Miami has captured four of the past five meetings in bowl games, with four of those contests on Miami’s home field in the Orange Bowl.

The Coaches
Nebraska: Bo Pelini (Ohio State, ‘90) owns a 61-24 record (.718) in his seventh season as head coach. He has guided NU to nine or more wins in each of his first six seasons as head coach, joining Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne in accomplishing that feat at Nebraska. His 60 wins trail only Osborne and Devaney on the NU wins list. Pelini joins Alabama’s Nick Saban as the only head coaches in the nation to win nine or more games each of the past six seasons.

Miami: Al Golden (Penn State, ‘91) is in his fourth season as Miami’s head coach and his ninth season overall as a collegiate head coach. Golden has guided Miami to a 24-16 record in his tenure including a trip to the Russell Athletic Bowl in 2013. Golden previously served as the head coach at Temple from 2006 to 2010, and has stints as an assistant at Virginia, Boston College and Penn State.

Nebraska Football
Nebraska is 868-357-40 all-time, one of just eight schools with 800 all-time victories 
- Nebraska has won five national championships (1970, 1971, 1994, 1995, 1997).
- The Cornhuskers have won 43 conference championships.
- NU’s 50 all-time bowl appearances rank third nationally.
- Since 1970, NU has 434 wins, 24 more than any other school.
- Nebraska’s 107 football Academic All-Americans lead the nation.
- The Huskers have 110 All-Americans in school history.

Scouting Miami
Miami seeks its eighth consecutive regular-season non-conference victory Saturday, as the Hurricanes have not lost a regular-season non-conference game since a 41-3 defeat at Notre Dame on Oct. 6, 2012. Miami brings a 2-1 record into tonight’s game, rebounding from a conference road loss to Louisville in the season opener to post consecutive victories over Florida A&M and Arkansas State by a combined score of 82-27.

Under center, Miami starts true freshman Brad Kaaya, a high school teammate of Nebraska sophomore I-back Terrell Newby. Kaaya is completing 60 percent of his passes through three games and has amassed 693 passing yards with seven touchdowns against five interceptions. His favorite targets have been Herb Waters and Braxton Berrios, who have hauled in 10 catches apiece. The Hurricanes’ biggest threat has been speedster Phillip Dorsett who is averaging 35.5 yards per catch on his eight receptions with four touchdowns.

Kaaya’s transition to college football has been aided by a solid running game, highlighted by Duke Johnson. Johnson has carried the ball 43 times this fall for 277 yards and two touchdowns. He is averaging 92.3 yards per game, and Johnson ranks eighth on Miami’s all-time rushing list with 2,144 career yards.

Miami is averaging 31.7 points per game and 382.7 yards of total offense per contest. Defensively, the Hurricanes are allowing 19.3 points per game. Opponents are averaging only 259.7 total yards against Miami, as the Hurricanes have limited their first three opponents to only 248 rushing yards.

Series History
The all-time series between Nebraska and Miami is tied, 5-5. The Huskers and Hurricanes are meeting for the first time since the 2002 BCS National Championship Game, and the programs are facing each other in the regular season for the first time since 1976. Six of the 10 all-time meetings have been in bowl games, including each of the last five matchups.

Nebraska is 3-0 against Miami in Lincoln and the Huskers are 3-1 against the Hurricanes in regular-season meetings. Miami is 4-2 against Nebraska in bowl games, including Orange Bowl victories that clinched the national title for the Hurricanes following the 1983 and 1991 seasons and Miami’s 2002 National Championship Game victory over the Huskers. Nebraska defeated Miami in the 1995 Orange Bowl, clinching Tom Osborne’s first national championship during the 1994 season.

Nebraska Head Coach Bo Pelini
Bo Pelini is in his seventh season as Nebraska’s head coach and owns a 61-24 record with the Huskers. Pelini has won or shared four divisional titles in his first six seasons as head coach, including the 2012 Big Ten Legends Division crown. He guided NU to three straight Big 12 North Division crowns from 2008 to 2010, becoming the first coach in the history of the Big 12 to win at least a share of a division title in each of his first three years. 

He has guided Nebraska to at least nine wins each of his six seasons, and three 10-win seasons. Pelini is third on the Nebraska career victories list, trailing only Tom Osborne and Bob Devaney. 
Pelini took charge of the Huskers after a highly successful five-year run as a collegiate defensive coordinator, including orchestrating NU’s defensive efforts in 2003. Pelini picked up his first college head coaching victory as NU’s interim coach in the 2003 Alamo Bowl against Michigan State.

Following his one season at Nebraska, Pelini served as the co-defensive coordinator at Oklahoma in 2004, helping the Sooners to the Big 12 title and BCS title game. He then followed with three seasons as the defensive coordinator at LSU. With the Tigers, Pelini led three consecutive defenses to No. 3 national rankings in total defense. He culminated his time in Baton Rouge by helping the Tigers to the 2007 national championship.

In addition to his five seasons as an assistant at the collegiate level, Pelini coached in the NFL for nine seasons, serving three years each with the San Francisco 49ers, New England Patriots and Green Bay Packers. Pelini was a team captain and four-year letterman as a safety at Ohio State from 1987 to 1990.

Miami Head Coach Al Golden
Al Golden led Miami back to a bowl game in 2013, when the Hurricanes opened the year 7-0 and finished with a 9-4 record. He has has won 13 of his last 18 games on the Hurricane sideline and owns a 24-16 record in his fourth season at Miami.

Golden came to Miami after serving as the head coach at Temple from 2006 to 2010, when he led the Owls to a 27-34 record. In compiling a 17-8 record in his final two seasons, Golden led Temple to its first bowl appearance in 20 years in 2009.

Before becoming a head coach, Golden spent five seasons as the defensive coordinator at Virginia from 2001 to 2005. He coached linebackers for Penn State, his alma mater, in 2000 after previously coaching the linebackers at Boston College from 1997 to 1999. Golden’s first collegiate coaching job was as a graduate assistant at Virginia.

Nebraska to Honor 1994 National Championship Team 
Nebraska is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its 1994 national championship by honoring members of that team this weekend. The team will have a private banquet on Friday night, and will be honored on the field at Saturday’s game against Miami. The 1994 Huskers finished a perfect 13-0 in 1994, capping the season with a 24-17 come-from-behind victory over Miami in the Orange Bowl.

The perfect season gave Head Coach Tom Osborne his first national championship, and NU went on to win national titles in 1995 and 1997. Nebraska was determined to win the 1994 title after a last-second Orange Bowl loss to Florida State cost the Huskers a national championship in 1993. The determination and hunger from that loss paid off in 1994, as Nebraska overcame numerous injuries to win several close games. Four of the Huskers’ 13 victories were decided by 10 or fewer points, and NU had to use three starting quarterbacks on the season due to injuries.

Nebraska shut out 24th-ranked West Virginia, 31-0, in the Kickoff Classic to open the season before winning at Texas Tech. The Huskers cruised to a 49-21 victory over 13th-ranked UCLA in week three behind 484 rushing yards.

Following wins over Pacific, Wyoming and Oklahoma State, the Huskers were tested again in a 17-6 road win at No. 16 Kansas State. Sophomore walk-on Matt Turman earned the start at quarterback, but Lawrence Phillips’ 126 rushing yards would be all the offense NU would need as the Husker defense limited Kansas State to 242 total yards. Nebraska next earned a 42-7 win at Missouri before facing a higher-ranked opponent for the only time all season.

No. 3 Nebraska celebrated its 200th consecutive home sellout with a dominating 24-7 victory over second-ranked Colorado on Oct. 29. Nebraska finished the regular season with a 28-point win over Kansas, a 16-point win at Iowa State and a 10-point victory at Oklahoma in the regular-season finale.

In the Orange Bowl, No. 3 Miami jumped out to a 10-0 first-quarter lead and a 17-7 lead in the third quarter. But NU rallied, scoring 17 unanswered points, including a pair of touchdown runs by Cory Schlesinger in the game’s final 7:38.

Huskers'-Canes Look to Add to Memorable Series History
Although Nebraska and Miami are meeting for just the 11th time, the series has featured some memorable games, including several with a national championship on the line. Six of the 10 meetings have been in bowl games, including the past five matchups. In those last five games, the winner was crowned as the national champion four times. 

The series got off to a historical start in 1951, when the Huskers lost to the Hurricanes in Miami, 19-7, in the first night game in Nebraska history. Eleven years later, Nebraska defeated Miami, 36-34, at the Gotham Bowl in New York City, marking the Huskers’ first-ever bowl win.

The programs met again in the postseason in the 1984 Orange Bowl, when Nebraska suffered one of the most heartbreaking losses in school history. The unbeaten and top-ranked Huskers staged a late comeback to pull within one at 31-30 with 48 seconds remaining. With the national championship on the line, Coach Tom Osborne elected to forgo a shared crown and go for the outright title by choosing to go for two instead of kicking the extra point. Miami deflected Turner Gill’s pass on the attempt, lifting the Hurricanes to their first of four national championships in a nine-year span. Miami capped its run of national titles with a 22-0 shutout of Nebraska in the 1992 Orange Bowl.

Osborne and the Huskers got their revenge three years later, when No. 1 Nebraska used a pair of fourth-quarter touchdowns to defeat the third-ranked Hurricanes, 24-17, in the 1995 Orange Bowl. That victory gave Osborne his first national title and began Nebraska’s stretch of three national championships in a four-season span from 1994 to 1997. Overall, Nebraska and Miami combined for seven national titles in 15 seasons from 1983 to 1997, facing each other in four bowl games during that span. The most recent matchup came in the 2002 National Championship game at the Rose Bowl under the BCS format. Miami defeated Nebraska, 37-14, to earn its fourth bowl game victory over the Huskers.

Huskers Look to Complete Perfect Non-Conference Season
Nebraska improved to 3-0 in 2014 with a 55-19 victory at Fresno State. The win gave Nebraska a 3-0 start for the first time since 2011, and marked the fourth time in seven seasons under Bo Pelini that the Huskers have started 3-0. 

- The victory at Fresno State ensured the Huskers of a winning non-conference record, marking the 33rd straight season NU has accomplished that feat since a 2-2 record outside of Big Eight play in 1981.

- Nebraska will attempt to complete non-conference play undefeated with a win over Miami on Saturday night. Nebraska has had two perfect non-league seasons under Pelini, most recently in 2011. Nebraska has had 23 unbeaten non-conference seasons since 1970.

NU Tough Under the Lights at Memorial Stadium
Nebraska has been extremely tough at home in night games at Memorial Stadium. The Huskers have won 13 straight home night games and are 39-5 all-time under the lights in Lincoln. Nebraska was 2-0 at home in night games in 2013.

- The Huskers’ dominance at night in Lincoln has been impressive, as 30 of the home night wins have been by at least 13 points.

- Nebraska’s five losses in home night games have all come against teams that won at least 10 games in that season (Washington, 1991; Texas, 2002; USC, 2007; Virginia Tech and Missouri, 2008).

NU Rushing Attack off to Strong Start in 2014
Nebraska has featured one of the nation’s top rushing attacks over the past several seasons and appears to have the same ability in 2014. The Huskers were dominant on the ground in a 55-7 win over Florida Atlantic in the season opener, rushing for 498 yards and averaging 8.7 yards per carry. The rushing output was Nebraska’s best under Bo Pelini and the Huskers’ best since rushing for 641 yards at Baylor in 2001.

Through three games, Nebraska is averaging 324.3 rushing yards per game to rank second in the Big Ten and eighth nationally.

- Nebraska’s combined rushing output in the first three games of the season is the Huskers best through three games since 2010. The Huskers averaged 344.0 rushing yards per game through three contests in 2010.

- In addition to Abdullah’s career-high rushing effort against Florida Atlantic, sophomore Terrell Newby ran for a career-high 107 yards. The game marked the 76th time in school history Nebraska has had two or more 100-yard rushers, and the second straight year NU has accomplished that feat in the season opener.

- Nebraska’s 498-yard effort against FAU marked the 16th time under Pelini that Nebraska has rushed for at least 300 yards. The Huskers are a perfect 16-0 in those games, including a 3-0 record last season.

- Nebraska has reached at least 200 rushing yards in 19 games since the start of the 2012 season, including five times in 2013 and two of three games in 2014. Nebraska was 5-0 when rushing for at least 200 yards last season.

- In 2013, Nebraska finished third in the Big Ten and 19th nationally in rushing, averaging 215.7 yards per game. The 2013 rushing success continued Nebraska’s recent surge on the ground. Nebraska has averaged better than 200 rushing yards per game for four straight seasons, and has ranked in the top 20 nationally each year from 2010 to 2013. NU led the Big Ten in rushing in 2012, and topped the Big 12 in rushing offense in 2010.

- Nebraska’s 335 rushing yards against Illinois in 2013 marked its second-highest total in a Big Ten Conference game and its most since rushing for 346 yards at Minnesota in 2011.

- With Abdullah posting 1,690 rushing yards in 2013, Nebraska has had a 1,000-yard rusher each of the past five seasons. That is the longest stretch for NU since the Huskers had at least one 1,000-yard rusher from 1991 to 1995.

Click on the "Game Notes" link in the related links section at the top of this page for more notes on this weekend's game.