Consider a number or two from Nebraska football’s 23-20 loss to fifth-ranked Arizona in the 1998 Culligan Holiday Bowl, the Huskers’ 30th consecutive bowl and Frank Solich’s first as head coach.
“I thought we played hard, played well at times, but apparently not consistently enough throughout the game,” Solich said the day after Nebraska lost its fourth game. The Huskers dropped from 14th to 19th in the final AP rankings, the lowest since 1968, when they weren’t ranked.
“We were not able to establish an inside running game, and that eventually hurt us in terms of being able to control the ball a little bit more, pick up third-down conversions, and those type of things.”
So here’s a significant number. Nebraska rushed for only 87 yards, with 280 yards of offense.
Even so, the Huskers took a 20-16 lead with 10:44 remaining on an eight-play, 88-yard drive, culminating in a 4-yard, Eric Crouch-to-tight end Tracey Wistrom touchdown pass. The drive included a 33-yard pass to Wistrom, a 22-yard pass to fullback Joel Makovicka and a 12-yard Crouch run.
“I thought we made some big plays when we needed to give ourselves a chance at the end, which was good to see,” said Solich.
The problem was Arizona responded with a nine-play, 69-yard touchdown drive to regain the lead, and Nebraska’s next possession included a fumbled pitch and ended with a Crouch interception. That allowed the Wildcats to run down the clock and for Nebraska to use its final two timeouts.
The Huskers got the ball with 34 seconds remaining at their own 27, but an 8-yard pass to Billy Haafke and three incompletions followed, the last as the final 4 seconds elapsed.
Could coaches make the difference between finishing 9-4 or 11-2 or even 12-1, Solich was asked. “I think it involves everybody,” he replied. “The season was tough in that every loss came down to the end. When that happens, you look at a play here or there that you’d like to have over, that you’d like to have back. You don’t tend to look at it that way as much when you win a game as you do if you lose a close one, so I think we’re all a little tougher on ourselves when we lose the close games right at the very end.
“You want to feel like you could’ve done something to pull it out.”
The Arizona loss was the closest by points. The others were by 10, seven and four.
Nebraska’s defense held the Wildcats to 265 yards of offense and forced four fumbles, three of which the Huskers recovered. Rush end Mike Rucker was named the Defensive Player of the Game after making seven tackles, six solos and five for losses. He also had two pass breakups.
Rucker, nose tackle Jason Wiltz and rush end Aaron Wills had sacks. Rover Mike Brown led the Blackshirts with 13 tackles. Cornerback Ralph Brown broke up three passes.
Crouch was the Huskers’ leading rusher with 28 yards and completed 12-of-28 passes for 193 yards and two touchdowns, with two interceptions. His first touchdown pass went for 45 yards to wingback Shevin Wiggins for a 10-9 Nebraska lead with 1:53 remaining in the first half.
A Loran Kaiser fumble recovery on Arizona’s ensuing possession set up Kris Brown’s 23-yard field goal as time elapsed in the half to increase the Husker lead to 13-10.
Brown kicked a 25-yard field goal 5 minutes earlier.
Arizona’s other touchdown came on a 15-yard pass, 4 seconds into the fourth quarter.
“This was not an easy year for this football team, and we knew that would be the case,” Solich said of following Tom Osborne’s three national championships in his final four seasons. “But I thought they did measure up in terms of shouldering all of that and coming back game after game and coming back and playing as hard as they could.”
