Nebraska football’s 21-20 victory at Kansas the first Saturday in November 1993 came down to one play, a Jayhawks 2-point conversion attempt with 52 seconds remaining.
“Basically, I think they were lucky,” Kansas guard Hessley Hempstead said of the Huskers.
You can be the judge. Trailing 21-14, Kansas drove 80 yards on 17 plays, 13 runs by June Henley for 60 of the yards, for a touchdown — on Henley’s 3-yard run. The Jayhawks could have tied the score with a kick by two-time, first-team All-Big Eight placekicker Dan Eichloff, who had made 110 of his 113 attempts during his career. But Coach Glen Mason opted to go for the win.
NCAA rules didn’t include overtimes in 1993. Mason said he never considered settling for a tie.
Because Kansas had rushed for 179 yards, including 148 by Henley, Nebraska defensive coordinator Charlie McBride expected a run and called for blitzing from the right and left sides to close the running lanes. “We could not stop their running game,” Coach Tom Osborne said.
Henley, however, was on the sideline when the Jayhawks lined up. And the play was a rollout pass by quarterback Asheiki Preston, who passed for the game’s first touchdown. So blitzing was the right call, except both blitzers came from the same side, opposite the side where Preston rolled out.
Are you following this?
Somehow the Huskers had the receiver covered and Preston’s pass hit the ground. Nebraska killed the clock, around three Jayhawk timeouts.
The Huskers responded to KU’s opening touchdown with a 13-play, 73-yard touchdown drive ending in Calvin Jones’ 4-yard run on their first possession, then took the lead on Tommie Frazier’s 8-yard touchdown pass to tight end Gerald Armstrong with 8:46 remaining in the first half.
Kansas tied the score with a touchdown late in the third quarter, then the Huskers retook the lead on a five-play, 67-yard drive capped by Frazier’s 10-yard pass to tight end Trumane Bell.
Jones had a 51-yard run on the drive and finished with 195 yards and the touchdown on 29 carries, increasing his season totals to 753 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns, despite missing two games and not actually playing in another because of injury.
Frazier, still limited by a sore shoulder, carried nine times for 35 yards and completed 4-of-7 passes for 31 yards and the two touchdowns. Back-up Brook Berringer completed 3-of-3 passes for 40 yards, with one interception late in the first half. Nebraska had driven 77 yards to the Jayhawk 6-yard line. On second-and-5, as the Huskers tried to increase their lead, Berringer’s pass was intercepted in the end zone.
Linebacker Mike Anderson led the Blackshirts with 12 tackles. Outside linebacker Trev Alberts had 11 tackles but no sacks for the first time all season. No one sacked Preston.
“We felt all along that Kansas was one of the top teams in the conference, and they played like it today,” Osborne said of the Jayhawks, who dropped to 4-6, including 2-3 in the Big Eight.
The Huskers may have suffered from what Osborne called during the week leading up the “Iowa State Syndrome,” a reference to Nebraska’s 19-10 loss to an overmatched Iowa State team the previous season. The Huskers weren’t as focused on the task at-hand as they should have been.
Even a tie probably would have eliminated Nebraska’s chances of playing for a national title in the Orange Bowl. But those chances were enhanced with the win, even by one point, because Wisconsin tied third-ranked Ohio State and LSU upset fifth-ranked Alabama.
As a result, the Huskers climbed from sixth to fourth in the Associated Press poll.
Lucky? Then so be it this time.
