BRIAN ROSENTHAL / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 7:00 pm
The Huskers are thinking revenge. Just not the kind of revenge you might think.
Last year’s 40-15 disaster at Kansas? Forget it. It’s in the past, Nebraska football players and coaches say. Isn’t relevant to this year.
As for how the Huskers played against the Jayhawks? Now that’s providing incentive. And not just for Saturday night, when Kansas visits Lincoln for a 6:10 kickoff.
Last year’s lesson-learned-the-hard-way will be on Nebraska’s mind during every Big 12 Conference game.
“You can’t sit there and be hateful of KU, because we played like crap,” Nebraska linebacker Corey McKeon said.
“This ‘I can’t believe we let Kansas beat us, we gotta get them back …’ Get them back? If we played our game, we win. That’s how it works.”
So rather than concerning themselves with earning revenge against Kansas, the Huskers say they’re focused on no more letdowns.
“We just didn’t prepare as hard as we should have (last year against Kansas),” McKeon said. “We looked past them a little bit. We don’t do that anymore. We take every game as serious as any game. We showed that against Troy (a 56-0 victory).
“If you want to be Big 12 champs, you can’t lose. You can’t lose to Kansas, you can’t lose to Iowa State, you can’t lose to Texas. That’s the kind of mentality we’ve taken on. I don’t care who we’re playing, we can’t lose in the Big 12. We can’t.”
Last year’s loss to Kansas — Nebraska’s first to the Jayhawks since 1968 — was downright gory.
Defensively, Nebraska allowed a team that ranked 90th nationally in rushing offense to produce two 100-yard rushers. The Huskers’ offense produced 21 rushing yards. Quarterback Zac Taylor threw for 117.
“That was just a game where we played bad,” Taylor said. “Whoever we were going to play that week, it just wasn’t one of our finer games. Kansas happened to be the team that got the best of us.”
Taylor and other players were pressed Tuesday for comments about revenge. Nobody bit.
“It’s tough to forget when you lose a game like that,” Taylor said, “but we’re doing our best to put that behind us and just focus on being 1-0 in the conference.”
When coach Bill Callahan was asked if he needed to remind players to not think about last year’s game, he responded with an abrupt “No.”
If anybody around Memorial Stadium mentions last year’s Kansas game, it’s usually in a positive manner. Positive in that Nebraska came back from that game to finish the season with three straight wins, including an inspiring Alamo Bowl victory over Michigan. That prompted a preseason Top 25 ranking this season for the Huskers, who are ranked No. 21 and enter Saturday’s game 3-1.
McKeon referenced a speech during fall camp by cornerbacks coach Phil Elmassian, who spoke at length about how the Kansas game was a wake-up call for Nebraska and turned the Huskers into the team they are today.
“He believed that after the Kansas game, that was our turnaround game,” McKeon said. “After listening to him say that, that’s all you think about. Do you want to play like you did in the Kansas game, or do you want to play like you did in the Michigan game?
“(Kansas) is the kind of game we look back on and say, ‘We don’t want to play like that anymore.’”
Reach Brian Rosenthal at 473-7436 or brosenthal@journalstar.com.