Lincoln Journal Star from Lincoln, Nebraska • 23

Lincoln Journal Star Sunday. September 21. 1997 SB page design: Karl Vogel i HUSKER EXTRA FIRST QUARTER i '3 iv i Lance 1 3 Ted Retzlaff 1 -S PA8SINQ Player C-A-l Yards Scott Frost 8-15-0 B8 RECEIVtNQ Player No. Yards Lance Brown 2 38 Shevin Wiggins 2 24 Matt Davison 1 14 Corral Buck 1 7 Kenny Cheatham 1 7 Ahman Green 1 -2 30 Grant Wbtrom 3 0 8.0 Bnan 2 1 ErieWartleld 2 0 Tony Ortiz 1 1 Carlos Post 1 1 Joe Waster 1 1 0 Brandon 1 0 Erie 1 0 Ralph Brown 0 1 Ave, Jason Wiltz 0 1 19.0 120 SACKS 14 0 Player No. 7.0 Chad Kefeay 1 7.0 Mike Rucker.

1 2.0 Eric Johnson 1 Jay Foreman 1 SPECIAL TEAMS PUNTING TT Player No. Yards 7 Jesse Koech 4 169 6 KICKOfF RETURNS 4 Player No. Yards 4 Joe Walter 1 26 3 Sheldon Jackson 1 13 Nebraska DEFENSE OFFENSE TACKLES RUSHING STyTUman "I No. Yards Avg. Octavious 3 42.3 NEBRASKA 7, WASHINGTON 0 Scott Froat 34 run (7:28) I Drive 80 yard In 6 plays.

I Other plays Ahman Green 5 run, Green 8 run, Makovicka 4 run. Me- kovieka 1 7 run, Washington offsides penalty, Green 7 run. I Conversion Kris Brown kick. NEBRASKA 14, WASHINGTON 0 Scott Frost 30 run (1:51) I Drive 56 yards In to plays. Other plays Green 8 run.

Green 1 run, Frost 2 run, Green no gain, Green 6 run, Frost 3 pass to Lance Brown, Frost 2 run. Green 9 run, Frost no gain, Nebraska false start penalty. I Conversion K. Brown kick. SECOND QUARTER NEBRASKA 21, WASHINGTON 0 Ahman Green 4 run (7:20) I Drive 55 yards in 7 plays, set up by Sean O'Laughin 2 punt.

I Other plays Green 1 run, L. Brown 3 run, Frost 14 pass to Matt Davison, Green 1 1 run, Froat Incomplete pass to Wiggins, Green 1 run. I Conversion K. Brown kick. NEBRASKA 21, WASHINGTON 7 Cam Cleeland 12 paaa from Marques Tuiaaoaopo (1:38) Drive 62 yards in 4 plays, set up by failed NU fake field goal attempt.

I Other plays Tuiasosopo 14 scramble, Tuiasosopo Incomplete pass to Joe Jarzynka, Tuiasosopo 36 pass to Jerome Pathon. I Conversion Randy Jones kick. THIRD QUARTER NEBRASKA 21, WASHINGTON 14 Mike Reed 2 paaa from Marques Tuiaaoaopo (2:49) Drive 76 yards in 7 plays. Other plays Maurice Shaw 3 run, Tuiasosopo 54 pass to Pathon. Tuiasosopo 1 loss on sack by Rucker, Tuiasosopo 4 run, Tuiasosopo 1 5 pass to Cleeland, Shehee 1 loss.

Conversion R. Jones kick. AT 1 3 0 1 3 Joel Makovicka 12 129 10.8 Mike Brown 8 Ahman Green 29 129 4.4 ChadKelsay 3 Scott Frost 18 97 5.4 Jason Peter 1 Correl 5 34 6.8 Mike Rucker. 3 2e.i' 1 13.0-,i ,4 3 i Yards 5" 1-1 1 Washington OFFENSE RUSHING Player No. Yards Rashaan Shehee 11 28 M.

Tuiasosopo 11 12 Maurice Shaw 5 10 Brock Huard 1 -7 PASSING Player C-A-l Yards M. Tuiasosopo 12-22-0 270 Brock Huard 4-8-0 29 RECEIVING Player No. Yards Jerome Pathon 5 195 Rashaan Shehee 4 18 Cam Cleeland 3 42 Fred Coleman 2 37 Joe 1 5 Mike Reed 1 2 MacTuiaea 1 2 Josh Smith 2 0 Jermaine 1 1 Toure Butler 1 0 Jabarilssa 1 0 Gary Shavey 1 0 SACKS Player No. SekouWiggs 1 Chris Campbel 1 SPECIAL TEAMS PUNTING Player No. Yards Sean O'Laughin 7 244 PUNT RETURNS Player No.

Yards Joe Jarzynka 1 10 KICKOFF RETURNS Player No. Yards Joe Jarzynka. 3 68 Jerome Pathon 1 31 TD 2 0 Avg. 349 DEFENSE TACKLES Player UT AT TT TonyParrish 11 6 17 Nigel Burton 5 6 11 Lester Towns 6 2 8 Marques 5 3 8 Chris Campbel 5 2 7 Jerry Jensen 5 16 Jason Chorak 3 3 6 Jeremiah Pharms 2 2 4 Mel Miller 2 13 SekouWiggs 2 13 10.0 FOURTH QUARTER NEBRASKA 24, WASHINGTON 14 Kris Brown 20 field goal (12:45) Drive 45 yards in 1 3 plays. Other plays Makovicka 2 run.

Green 2 run, Green 7 run, Makovicka 6 run, Green 2 run. Green 1 run, Frost 2 run on fourth-and-1. Frost 4 run, Makovicka 10 run, Frost 5 run but NU penalized for personal foul, Makovicka 1 6 run, Green 2 run. NEBRASKA 27, WASHINGTON 14 Kris Brown 31 field goal (2:25) TED KIRKLmcoH Journal Star Nebraska senior quarterback Scott Frost (7) throws one of his 15 passes against Washington Saturday. Drive 81 yards in 12 plays.

Other plays Correl BuckhaHer 2 run, NU false start penalty, Makovicka 43 run, Frost sacked for 1 toss by Chris Campbel, Frost 20 run, Makovicka 12 run, Buck hatter 1 run, Frost 8 run, Buckhaiter 6 run, Makovicka 1 run, NU holding penalty nullifies Frost TD pass to Vershan Jackson, Frost toss of 3, Frost 7 pass to Kenny Cheatham. Avg. 39.0 4.5 14.0 18.5 5.0 2.0 Avg. 22t7 31.0 OptionHusky defense disappointed Backup QB nearly rallies UW Continued from Page 1 BY JEFF KORBEUK Lincoln Journal Star It! is "The line of scrimmage is a war," he said. "If you can't win it, you're not going to win very much." The most visible play came in the fourth quarter.

Trailing by a touchdown, Washington pinned Nebraska on its 5-yard line with a punt A penalty put the ball at the Husker 3. Then, on a second-and-U, Nebraska fullback Joel Makovicka ripped through the Washington line on a trap play for a 43-yard gain. The Husker fullback finished with a career-high 129 yards on 12 carries, tying I-back Ahman Green for rushing honors. "We couldn't get them stopped down there," Lambright said. "We would have had field position and an opportunity to score and we didn't hold them there." The Huskies also couldn't stop! Nebraska's reputed option.

Linebacker Jason Chorak said four days wasnt enough to prepare. Even more time might not have been enough, he said. "These guys have been doing it for 25 years," he said. "How are you going to learn how fast they -are going? They know who to pick 'tip and how to switch off their blocks. went for 25 yards.

"What happened today was disappointing," said Washington's Mac Tuiaea, a 6-foot-6, 285-pound defensive tackle. "No one goes out there and expects anything like that to happen." But it did. Time and time again. Nebraska converted eight of 18 third-down conversions. Of those, seven times the Cornhuskers did it with running plays.

One of them was a 30-yard touchdown run by quarterback Scott Frost to give Nebraska a 14-0 lead in the first quarter. "We had seen some game films last year where people were able to pound it right at them," Frost said. "That's the style of football we win with around here. We're going to be" more, physical and take jit.right at people." Washington Coach Jim Lambright said the game was won in the trenches. The Huskers varied their offense, which surprised the Huskies, he said.

They also dominated the line of scrimmage. That, too, came as a surprise. Misfire on opening drive was crucial to the outcome of game I SEATTLE Marques Tuiasosopo teammates (old him not to worry about throwing a 90-yard bomb. So the true freshman threw a 41-yarder instead. 1 With starter Brock Huard, the Huskies' sophomore sensation, on the sideline with a sprained ankle, Tuiasosopo was thrust into the biggest game of his career.

The 6-foot-l, 200-pounder from Woodinville, almost pulled off a miracle. Almost Tuiasosopo rallied the No. 2 Huskies from a 21-0 deficit to within a touchdown before falling Saturday 27-14 to No. 7 Nebraska at Husky Stadium. Tuiasosopo, who had thrown only two passes and played 12 snaps in his Washington career, came in with 12 minutes, 27 seconds remaining in (he second quarter after Huard went down after a tackle by Nebraska rush end Grant Wistrom.

"I didn't know what to expect," Tuiasosopo said. "I would just get the plays and run them." The more he ran them, the more his confi-dence grew. After throwing an incomplete pass on his first attempt. He hooked up with senior Jerome Pathon on a 41-yard completion. The toss was the first of several long completions between the two.

2 "He is very confident," said Pathon, who would finish with five receptions for 195 yards. "He tried to rally us together and get us pumped up, ready fogo." Tuiasosopo finished the game with 270 yards on 12 of 22 passing. His longest was a 54-yarder to Pathon. He also threw touchdown passes to tight end Cameron Cleeland (12 yards) and fullback Mike Reed (2 yards). "I didn't want it to be any different than when Brock was in there," Tuiasosopo said.

The freshman's play drew compliments from his coach. "One of his strong points is his maturity," Washington Coach Jim Lambright said. Right from the get-go, when he won the backup job, he Stepped in with a lot of confidence. He has a lot of the same confidence that Brock does." I Huard praised his backup's play. Before he gid, he had trouble answering questions about his own injury.

Trainers tried icing and taping the left ankle, but they were unable to get Huard tack on his feet. Huard had completed 4 of 8 passes for 29 yards before leaving. "If it was my right anke we could have done some things," he said. "Being it was my left ankle, the one I drop off and push off, I couldn't get Back." His eyes filled with tears when asked if he $ras disappointed. It.

I Washington notes it' 1 Washington Coach Jim Lambright said not scoring on the opening series was crucial Saturday in his team's 27-14 loss to Nebraska at Seattle The Huskies took the kickoff and drove from their 34 to Nebraska's 15 before trying a field goal, but Randy Jones' kick was wide left. "We wanted to start off positively Lambright said. "We were looking for threes and sevens. When you don put any points on the board that really hurts." Senior wide receiver Jerome Pathon said he wasn't worried with freshman Marques Tuiasosopo filling in for the injured Brock Huard at quarterback. "When you're down by 21, it didn't matter who was at quarterback," he said.

"We all knew that we would have to step it up." While the Huskies did not have a Nebraska native on the their roster, there was one person on the sideline with a connection to the Cornhuskers. Washington's head athletic trainer, Dermis Sealey, graduated from Nebraska with a master's degree in physical education. He is a iiative of Stromsburg. Nebraska quarterback Scott Frost's 34-yard touchdown run i the first quarter was the longest rushing score against the Huskies since Sedrick Shaw's 58-yard touchdown run for Iowa in the 1995 Sun Bowl. Pathon recorded his third straight TED KIRKLmai Journal Star 100-yard receiving game (5 195 yards).

Pathon is the first player to accomplish the feat since at least 1978. Game-by-game statistics were not available in the press box prior for to 1 978. ''r He established a new career-high with his total. His performance tied him for third on the UW all-time single game list with Jim Cope, who had 195 vs. USC in 1966.

"I knew he would come up with the Tsiasosopo said of Pathon. "Just because of the type of athlete he is." The Huskies 1997 schedule was rati ed as the second toughest in the nation according to the NCAA in its annual preseason toughest-schedule survey. Michigan was deemed to have to face the nation's toughest schedule based on last year's standings. Behind the Huskies are Florida, Arkansas and Colorado. The loss to Nebraska may have krtocked Washington out of the race to the national championship.

The players didn't look at the loss as the end of the season. "We just have to refocus or re-establish our goals," Pathon said. "This is one loss: We still have the rest of the regular season to play and I'm looking forward to that. "It's tough to lose a game like this, but as the same time there are positives." Nebraska's Brian Shaw (46) and Chad Kelsay (57) wrap up freshman Washington quarterback Marques Tuiasosopo (11) for a 4-yard loss in the third quarter. high school.

His father, Manu, played college football at UCLA and professionally for eight years with the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers. "From the beginning as an offense, we didn't lose hope," Tuiasosopo said. "They scored early and we still had two or three quarters. We thought we had a lot of time to keep moving the ball and scoring touchdowns." "Obviously, I'm just devastated," Huard said. Instead of moping, he gave Tuiasosopo advice, telling him "not to think, but play." "He battled like I knew he would," Huard said.

"A couple of big plays and I think the game would have been ours." Tuiasosopo was an all-state quarterback in Higher-ranked Huskies beaten by a better, quicker, hungrier team; The Huskers' didn't bite, which The onside kick was the game's pie jerseys can cause when they 6Y JOHN MCGRATH forced Huard to avoid a delay-pf-game flag by calling a time out. The timeout gave Jones a sophomore who never had attempted a colleigd. field goal before 1997 a few extra minutes to contemplate how his kick would look to tens of millions of fans tuninginonTV. Jones, believe it or not, missed 4 "We had them right where we wanted them on our first drive," said Huskies tight end Cam Cleeland. "We could have set the tone right away with even three points.

It wouldn't have mattered just' get something on the board. But for our team to come out empty like that just gave us a kind of feat that we can't squander anything against these guys." The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.) i SEATTLE There was a little tit more than a minute left on the Husky Stadium scoreboard Saturday when. Washington Coach Jim Lambright decided a punt at his team's 35-yard line was preferable to a fourth-and-10 pass. Because Nebraska owned a comfortable 13-point lead, Cornhuskers quarterback Scott Frost figured to kill the clock wherever his team had the balL This rendered a punt pointless and perfectly fitting, for it enabled the Husky braintrust to ihow it was as willing to make the wrong call on the day's last offensive drive as it was on the first Make no mistake. Washington got beaten by a better, quicker, stronger, hungrier football team Saturday.

most boneheaded move, but it's not as though it didn't have some competition. Remember the Huskies' opening drive? Using every page in their playbook, they advanced the ball to the Nebraska 16-yard line. On third-and-2, Brock Huard gave the ball to Rashaan Shehee up the gut Blah. No gain. That set up a fourth-and-2 and, for a fraction of a second, the spectacular possibility of Washington frazzling the visitors then and there.

Ah, but Lambright was in no such disposition. He ordered Huard to bark a long count with the idea of drawing Nebraska offside. It's an old gambit, one that usually works best against a team whose coach hasn't taken his teams to bowl games 24 times in 24 years. And yet, the Huskies still could've won, were it not for some of the dimmest hunches against the odds since Pete Rose was placing bets from the Cincinnati Reds' dugout "I think we have the better coaching staff," Nebraska defensive end Grant Wistrom said after the Cornhuskers 27-14 victory. "And it showed today." It showed on the feeble onside kick Washington attempted in the third quarter, just moments after freshman quarterback Marques Tuiasosopo showing a poise that might be called heroic electrified the crowd with his second touch--down pass of the afternoon.

74,023 fans on their feet, with almost 18 minutes remaining to play, with logic screaming otherwise, the Huskies' Randy Jones put a jump up and down and hug each other on the sideline, it evidently was difficult for Jim Lambright to identify momentum shifts. If the coach was in a fog about which team had the momentum before the onside kick, he had no such trouble after the Huskers took over at the Huskies' 47. Precisely three seconds after Washington made it interesting, Nebraska went to work on a physically spent, emotionally taxed defense. "I was (mad)," linebacker Lester Towns said of the ill-fated kick. "I mean, it was too early in the game.

I'm not trying to tell the coaches how to coach, but was just frustrating to come out and the defense didn't really have a chance to stop them." 1 I Commentary gentle soft-shoe tap on the ball, popping it up. An onside kick, of course, can't be retrieved by the kicking team unless it goes 10 yards. This went 7. The Cornhuskers took over in Washington territory, 12 plays later, they kicked a field goal The idea behind the onsides kick? "It was a change," Lambright said, "to regain the momentum." Regain the momentum? The Huskies, who'd been down 21-0, had crept to within seven points at 21-14. They had turned a regionally televised into what was becoming a legendary comeback.

Given the din of the crowd, and the mayhem dozens of guys in pur- I i ji. jfm.f.ji rti itiat-aKn fk firfri 4itf" 4i til 4i.r 4 4i- tt I iXt a to an iM A.Jm.