[Husker] Observations

[Bapi Gupta]

On Sat, 26 Nov 2005, Dick Karre wrote:

> 1) Despite all the angst this season, NU was one play away from the Big XII championship game.
> 2) When was the last time NU won as a two-touchdown underdog?
> 3) Has NU ever covered the spread by this much? Maybe some time when they were a slight favorite, but blew the opponent away? Never as an underdog, though, so far as I can recall.
> Dick Karre
> dkarre at comcast.net

1 - The spoiler role is a lot less pressure.  If Nebraska or Kansas played 
for the title this weekend, maybe the results would have been different. 
It's hard to speculate on the what-ifs.

2 - We really haven't been a double digit underdog very often, but, when 
we have been, we haven't won (and I'm looking back about 20 years). 
Those situations are @OU (2003) +29, 3-30, @KSU (2002) +10', 13-49, @KSU 
(1998) +10, 30-40, and 3 Orange Bowls FSU (1993) +17, 16-18, FSU(1992) 
+10, 14-27, and Miami (1991) +10, 0-22.

It might be noted that in 2000, 1999, 1996, 1995, 1990, we were *never* an 
underdog.  In 20 years, we've only been an underdog about once a year.

3 - Last year we were a 2 1/2 point underdog against Missouri and beat 
them 24-3, so the win was of the same order, but not the spread.  In 2002, 
we were a 5 1/2 underdog at Texas A&M and won 38-31.  In 1997, we were 
also a 2 1/2 point underdog at Washington and won 27-14.  We were 1 point 
underdog against Miami in the 2004 Orange Bowl and won 24-17.

As hard as this is to imagine, these are the only 4 games that Nebraska 
has won outright, as an underdog.

In the last 20 years, this weekend's win was rather unprecented.

Bapi