Top Husker Moments from the Last Decade

The most powerful, influential moment of the 2010s for Nebraska athletics came early in the decade, when Nebraska bolted from the Big 12 Conference to join the Big Ten Conference, a move that would offer more stability and financial gain, while also expanding opportunities for student-athletes, both in sports and academics. The Big Ten’s board of presidents and chancellors unanimously welcomed Nebraska to the Big Ten on June 11, 2010, and the move became official on July 1, 2011, giving the conference 12 schools. The announcement came the same week fellow Big 12 member Colorado said it was joining what would become the Pac 12, marking the beginning of conference realignment across the nation that would dominate headlines throughout the first half of the decade.

In football, Nebraska joined the Big Ten as a member of the Legends Division, along with Michigan, Michigan State, Iowa, Minnesota and Northwestern. The Leaders Division featured Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. The Huskers won the Legends Division in only their second season but lost to Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship game. The divisional format was short lived, as Maryland and Rutgers joined the conference in 2014, giving us the current West Division/East Division format.

Nebraska’s first Big Ten home football game resulted in the largest comeback in school history in a 34-27 win over Ohio State at Memorial Stadium. The No. 14 Huskers trailed 27-6 early in the third quarter when linebacker Lavonte David stripped and recovered a fumble at the Ohio State 23-yard line. That led to a quick touchdown, and the Husker offense caught fire from there, with running back Rex Burkhead contributing a couple of highlight-reel touchdowns.

It’s probably no surprise that one of Nebraska’s most consistently successful programs throughout the decade collected the athletic department’s first team regular-season Big Ten championship. John Cook’s volleyball team won the title in the Huskers’ inaugural Big Ten season, the first of three Big Ten volleyball championships. Baseball (2017), Women’s Gymnastics (2011, 2012, 2014, 2017), Soccer (2013), Softball (2014), Women’s Tennis (2013), Men’s Track and Field (2013, 2015, 2016, 2019) and Women’s Track and Field (2012) have also won regular-season Big Ten Championships, with Women’s Basketball and Soccer each winning a Big Ten Tournament title.

Fans paid as much as $20 to park on residential lawns near the Devaney Sports center for a sold-out women’s basketball game against Missouri on Feb. 27, 2010. No, the sell-out crowd of 13,595 – the first in program history – didn’t result from a promotional giveaway. The product on the court spoke for itself. Nebraska, 27-0 and ranked No. 3 in the nation, had just clinched its first regular-season Big 12 Conference championship days earlier with a victory at Oklahoma, and fans came to celebrate with a postgame trophy presentation. The Huskers won, 67-51, against a Missouri team that had come closer than any school to beating Nebraska in the regular season, falling 82-78 in Columbia two weeks earlier. 

Led by first-team All-American Kelsey Griffin, who had her No. 23 jersey retired four years later, Nebraska finished the regular season unbeaten and earned an unprecedented No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, despite a semifinal loss in the Big 12 Tournament to Texas A&M.  The Huskers defeated Northern Iowa and UCLA to earn their first Sweet 16, but fell to Kentucky in the NCAA Regional Semifinals in Kansas City to end the best season in school history at 32-2..

Veteran Nebraska volleyball coach John Cook has said time and time again that winning a Big Ten Conference championship is arguably more difficult that winning a national championship. Considering his Huskers came within three points of winning as many national titles (2) as Big Ten titles (3) in the decade, Cook may be onto something.

The Huskers totaled four conference titles during the decade, as they also won the 2010 Big 12 title during their final year in the conference.

While Nebraska won the Big Ten championship in its first season in the league, the Huskers lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, against Kansas State in Lincoln. That’s notable because that’s the last time Huskers haven’t advanced to the Sweet 16. The four straight Final Fours from 2015-18 set a program record. Nebraska won the national championship in 2015, lost in the semifinals in 2016, won another national championship, the fifth in program history, in 2017 and finished national runner-up in 2018, falling by three points to Stanford in the fifth and final game. With no seniors on the 2019 team that fell to Wisconsin in the NCAA Regional Finals, expectations are high for 2020, when Omaha will host the Final Four.

Cook’s program also moved from the NU Coliseum to the refurbished Devaney Sports Center, where, despite almost double capacity, the best fans in college volleyball continued to sell out matches. The 10 largest volleyball crowds in NCAA history occurred this decade, and Nebraska played in front of nine of those crowds.

The Nebraska men’s basketball team played its first two games in the Devaney Sports Center in 1976 against Iowa and Minnesota (both losses), and played its final two games in the Devaney Sports Center in 2013 … against Iowa and Minnesota (both victories). In the fall of 2013, the men’s and women’s basketball teams moved into sparkling new Pinnacle Bank Arena near the historic Haymarket District in Lincoln, and the basketball-centric arena immediately became a home court advantage. 

Only a missed tip-in in the final seconds against Michigan prevented the men from going undefeated in their inaugural season at PBA. Still, the 15-1 home record propelled the Huskers to their first NCAA Tournament bid since 1998. The highlight was an electric atmosphere on the final game of the regular season, a game forever known as No-Sit Sunday against Wisconsin. Fans stood throughout the entire game, and many stormed the court after Nebraska’s 77-68 victory over the No. 8 Badgers, and even had Wisconsin players talking months later how they had never had more fun competing in such a boisterous environment. Nebraska fans have continued to sell out Pinnacle Bank Arena, making it one of the best home courts in the Big Ten.

The women’s team had equal success in its first season in its new home, christening PBA with a 77-49 victory over UCLA en route to a 15-2 home record and NCAA Tournament berth. Speaking of the women’s NCAA Tournament, Pinnacle Bank Arena also hosted an NCAA Regional in 2014, with perennial power Connecticut earning a trip to the Final Four via Lincoln. So impressed was legendary coach Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma with Pinnacle Bank Arena and fan attendance, he scheduled a home-and-home series with Nebraska, with the Huskies visiting Lincoln in 2016, the first season of head coach Amy Williams.

The debut of PBA highlighted a decade full of impressive facility upgrades throughout the decade. In addition to the refurbishing of the Devaney Sports Center, the following new facilities were built in the 2010s:

• The $4.75 Alex Gordon Training Complex, an 18,000 square foot indoor practice facility for baseball and softball (2011).
• The $19 million Hendricks Training Complex, adjacent to the Devaney Sports Center, providing new practice homes for men’s and women’s basketball and wrestling (2011).
• The $20.4 million Nebraska Soccer and Tennis Complex, including the 2,500-seat Hibner Stadium for soccer and the indoor/outdoor Sid and Hazel Dillion Tennis Center (2015).
• The Nebraska Gymnastics Training Facility, adjacent to the Devaney Sports Center, set to open in January of 2020.

The decade ended with the announcement of the Go Big Athletic Facility project, which will feature a 350,000 square-foot complex that will provide the Nebraska football program with a new locker room, strength and conditioning center, athletic medicine facility, equipment room, meeting rooms, coaches' offices and an additional outdoor practice facility.

He took a handoff from quarterback Taylor Martinez and started left, then Martinez redirected 7-year-old Jack Hoffman to his right, where the young boy from Atkinson had a wall of blockers ready to pave his path. Wearing a helmet, red jersey and white pants, Jack trotted 69 yards for a touchdown in Nebraska’s 2013 Spring Game, and he instantly became a national phenomenon. In a decade where social media took fire and the term “going viral” became part of our lexicon, Jack’s run garnered more than 8 million views on You Tube, and also led newscasts and sportscasts that day across the nation.

Former Nebraska running back Rex Burkhead had developed a close relationship with Jack, who was battling pediatric brain cancer. With help from Jeff Jamrog, then Nebraska’s director of football operations, Burkhead helped organize the run for Jack as a show of support. Few people probably figured the gesture would turn into a national story for months and years to come. Jack got his own Upper Deck trading card, became an honorary member of the Cincinnati Bengals, where Burkhead would eventually play in the NFL, and won an ESPY for Best Moment of 2013. He attended the ESPY Awards in Los Angeles with Martinez. Jack’s father, Andy, spearheaded efforts to create the nonprofit Team Jack Foundation for pediatric brain cancer research, with which Burkhead had become majorly involved.

Now 14, Jack played football for the first time this fall for his junior high team, even though he was still getting treatment for a brain tumor. He and the Team Jack Foundation continue to make headlines, with Jack recently receiving a full four-year scholarship offer to Midland University, where Jamrog is now head football coach. 

The decade began inauspiciously for the man who would become the most decorated wrestler in Nebraska history. Fresh off a junior season in which he won a national championship at 165 pounds, Jordan Burroughs sat out the 2010 NCAA Championships with an injury. Earlier in the season, Burroughs suffered a torn PCL and LCL in a match that he still completed, but lost, breaking his 44-match winning streak. He took a medical redshirt, and it set up a dominating senior season and much, much more to come.

In his fifth season as a Husker, Burroughs recorded bonus points in his first 17 matches, and finished the regular season 29-0 and won his third Big 12 title. He dominated the 2011 NCAA Championships en route to becoming Nebraska’s first two-time national champion, and finished 36-0 for his second unbeaten season. 

That set the stage for a freestyle career that’s made him arguably the most prominent and popular wrestler in Nebraska history. The highlight of his career came in 2012, when he won a gold medal for the United States in the Summer Olympics in London. Prior to that, and only months after his second NCAA title, Burroughs won a gold medal in the 2011 World Championships, making him only the fourth wrestler to win an NCAA Division I championship and a world title in the same year. He also won gold medals in 2013, 2014 and 2017. He won bronzes in 2014 and 2018, and placed ninth in the 2016 Olympics. He began his international career with 69 straight victories, and his four world titles tie for most of any man in United States history.

The situation was dire, the outlook bleak. Nebraska trailed Northwester by three points – the Wildcats had just kicked a field goal with 1:20 remaining in regulation – and the Huskers faced fourth-and-15 deep in their own territory. Somehow, someway, running back Ameer Abdullah kept the game alive by catching a short pass and stretching just beyond the first down marker. That valiant effort set up, four plays later, one of most memorable plays in Nebraska football history, and the most memorable of the decade.

Backup quarterback Ron Kellogg III, on the game’s final play, took the snap from midfield and moved to his right, looking for room as the pocket began to collapse. Finally, Kellogg, a walk-on, stepped up, cocked and lofted a deep ball toward the end zone as the clocked showed zeros. The ball caromed off a pile of players around the 1-yard line and stayed in the air long enough for freshman receiver Jordan Westerkamp, who snagged the ball with his feet landing in the end zone for the game-winning touchdown. Nebraska players stormed field while replay review confirmed the play in the Huskers’ improbable 27-24 victory.

Westerkamp’s catch highlighted several game-winning scores in the final minute of regulation for the football team in the 2010s:

• Abdullah turned a short pass from Tommy Armstrong Jr. and broke tackles for an electric 58-yard touchdown with 20 seconds remaining to defeat McNeese State 31-24 in 2014. 
• Taylor Martinez lofted a pass in the corner of the end zone that Jamal Turner caught for the go-ahead touchdown with 6 seconds left in a 28-24 victory at Michigan State in 2012. 
• In a 2015 game against Michigan State at home, Brandon Reilly tight-roped the sideline after catching a pass from Armstrong for a 30-yard score with 38 seconds to play in a 39-38 upset of the No. 6 Spartans. 
• While not a game-winning score, Drew Brown’s 20-yard field goal with 8 seconds remaining in regulation forced a tie game against Iowa, and Kenny Bell caught a 9-yard pass from Armstrong in overtime for a 37-24 victory in 2014. (Nebraska also won overtime games at Iowa State in 2010 and at Penn State in 2013).
• Tanner Lee threw a 13-yard touchdown to Stanley Morgan Jr. with 14 seconds to play in a 25-24 victory at Purdue in 2017. 
• The decade’s final such play came when walk-on kicker Lane McCallum kicked a 24-yard field goal on the game’s final play for a 13-10 victory over Northwestern in 2019. 

Nebraska continued its success in the classroom in the 2010s, increasing its nation-leading number of Academic All-Americans to 338. In addition, three Husker student-athletes earned prominent and prestigious awards on the national level over the last decade because of their efforts in athletic competition, in the classroom and in the community. Two such honors have come within the last two months of 2019.

In October, three-time Nebraska track and field All-American Angela Mercurio earned NCAA Woman of the Year honors, becoming the second Nebraska student-athlete all-time to receive the honor. A three-time second-team All-American in the triple jump, Mercurio was also a three-time Big Ten Distinguished Scholar and four-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree. Earlier this year, she received the NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship, Big Ten Postgraduate Scholarship and was honored as one of the first-ever Rose Bowl Game Keith Jackson Postgraduate Scholarship recipients. She graduated from Nebraska in May, earning a 3.99 GPA as a double major in biochemistry and women’s and gender studies.

In December, former men’s gymnast Anton Stephenson earned a 2020 NCAA Today’s Top Ten Award, a prestigious honor bestowed annually upon 10 outstanding senior athletes from the previous academic year. A four-time All-American, Stephenson finished his impressive Husker career at the 2019 NCAA Championships with a third-place finish on vault and seventh-place finish in the all-around, helping Nebraska to a third-place finish, its best since 1999. 

Stephenson excelled outside the gym, becoming a Big Ten Distinguished Scholar and the Big Ten Medal of Honor recipient. He carried better than a 3.9 cumulative GPA as a nutrition and health sciences major throughout his academic career, and he was named Nebraska's Male Student-Athlete of the Year in 2019.

Nebraska boasts a nation-leading 18 NCAA Top Ten Award winners, with two this decade. The other came in 2014, when women’s tennis standout Mary Weatherholt earned the award. A 2012 business administration graduate who finished her academic career with a 3.878 GPA, Weatherholt was the first-ever Husker All-American tennis player in singles, and finished as the 2013 NCAA Singles runner-up and two-time Big Ten Women’s Tennis Athlete of the Year. Along with teammate Patricia Veresova, she also competed in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Doubles Championship. Her senior year, Weatherholt earned the 2013 ITA National Cissie Leary Sportsmanship Award and earned a Big Ten Medal of Honor, which led to her winning the Nebraska Female Student-Athlete of the Year award.

One of Nebraska’ most consistent athletic programs experienced significant change this year when longtime bowling coach Bill Straub announced his retirement after coaching since 1983. Maintaining stability and success without Straub shouldn’t be a concern, given new head coach Paul Klempa has been a Nebraska bowling assistant since 1997. He’s also hired as his assistant coach Shannon Pluhowsky, a former Husker bowler who helped Nebraska to national titles in 2004 and 2005. 

Oh, and speaking of national title, the Huskers won a couple more this past decade, in 2013 and 2015 – the fourth and fifth in school history. Also, Cassandra Leuthold and Lizabeth Kuhlkin earned national bowler of the year honors, in 2010 and 2015, respectively.

Nebraska’s move to the Big Ten Conference hasn’t slowed veteran coach Gary Pepin’s track and field programs from collecting conference titles. The men’s program entered the decade with 60 conference titles (indoor and outdoor) and added seven more conference titles over the past 10 years. The first, in 2010, came in the Big 12, but the Huskers won Big Ten titles in 2013, 2015, 2016 (indoor and outdoor) and 2019. The women’s program also won the Big 12 in its final season in the conference, then added Big Ten championships in 2011 and 2014. 

Chad Wright (2012 discus), Miles Ukaoma (2014 400m hurdles) and Nick Percy (2016, discus) won individual national titles, while John Welk (2015) and Drew Wiseman (2017) were Academic All-Americans of the Year.