You win a game like this maybe once a season. OK, more like once every 17.

Really, that’s how long it had been before Saturday’s strange-ending 7-6 outcome in Memorial Stadium against Pittsburgh since Nebraska walked off a football field victorious while scoring just seven points.

The previous one was a 7-3 slosh fest at Oklahoma in 1988 that clinched the Big Eight Conference title and sent the fist-pumping Huskers packing for the Orange Bowl.

The way Saturday’s game played out should have left an exhausted Bill Callahan headed straight to bed. But I doubt very much if the Huskers’ head man got a sound night of sleep.

It took Adam Ickes’ block of Josh Cummings’ final-play do-over 46-yard field goal attempt to decide if Nebraska would win its 115th straight game when holding an opponent to 10 or fewer points.

The sad thing is this contest didn’t deserve such a dramatic ending. Other than the fact neither team turned the ball over, I’m sure it’s one both Callahan and Pitt’s Dave Wannstedt would just as soon forget.

It figures that one of the biggest plays of the game for the still stagnant NU offense ended up in negative yardage after tailback Cory Ross got flagged 15 yards for dead-ball unsportsman-like conduct.

I’m guessing the tireless little tailback, following a 6-yard gain on a third-and-4 play late in the fourth quarter, said something more to the Panther defenders around him than just, “How’s 0-3 sound to you guys about now?“

That Nebraska is 3-0 says a lot about its will to win. Because watching these guys function — especially when its vaunted defense fails to get the ball into the end zone — you’d never think it possible.

“We knew we should be (3-0),” said Ickes, now more than just the toast of Page, Neb.

Who knows how far that will carry the Huskers? I’ll venture that the difference between Ickes blasting through the right side to get a hand on Cummings’ second low (and blocked) kick or having it sail through the uprights behind the North end zone is the difference between NU going to a bowl game or suffering a second straight losing season.

As cornerback Cortney Grixby so eloquently put it following a game in which he, on all but one play, more than held his own locking up against preseason All-American split end Greg Lee: “7-6, 3-0, 2-0 — we still won the game.“

One can only hope those latter two scores don’t indicate what Grixby thinks the Huskers have to do to remain unbeaten against their next two opponents, Iowa State and Texas Tech. Otherwise, any feeling of momentum they’re taking from September will be gone before the first leaves of fall hit the ground.

On Saturday, Nebraska’s offense went from trying razzle-dazzle plays that included a reverse option to pass for former quarterback Mike Stuntz to running former I-back Tierre Green on a wingback reverse to — not even trying for first downs in third-and-long situations.

For some reason, quarterback Zac Taylor, who supposedly came from a similar system as Nebraska’s, is in severe overload mode trying to follow Callahan’s plan. On Saturday, he was 10-for-20 for all of 93 yards.

Obviously, this West Coast offense isn’t going to make an All-Big 12 performer out of Taylor.

It’s still hard to find any flaws in the kid’s character. Remember, if he doesn’t fight to avoid a sack in the end zone on NU’s second possession of the second half, the Huskers lose.

That’s one reason why I say it’d be silly for Nebraska to see if a change in quarterbacks fixes what ails the offense. Besides, with Taylor under center, the Huskers have turned the ball over once in their past two games.

It wasn’t Taylor’s fault that Jordon Congdon missed a 39-yard field goal that would have iced things with 1:08 to play.

And, really, it wasn’t the defense’s fault that the NU student section was chanting for Cummings to “choke, choke, choke,” as the All-Big East performer toed his kicking spot at the Nebraska 36-yard line with seven seconds left.

Like the result of that flukey third-down play — a quick-thinking incompletion by Cummings after he had handled a deflected snap off the helmet of holder Adam Graessle, giving him one more shot to kick a game-winner with one tick left — you can chalk this outcome up to dumb luck.

“It doesn’t happen often,” Grixby said of winning with so little to show. “But (that’s why) you play every play like it’s the last.“

Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.