Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 43

C14 Austin American-Statesman SPORTS Sunday, October 28, 2007 LONGHORNS REPORT TEXAS 28, NEBRASKA 25 LONGHORNS NOTEBOOK Mack's 100th victory Saturday's victory put Mack Brown in elite company. He joined Darrell Royal as the only coaches to reach 100 wins at Texas. It's taken Brown just 9H seasons. Royal recorded 167 wins in 20 seasons at Texas. Brown said that the way Texas came back, it will be a victory that he'll remember forever.

"We love him. We'd do anything for him," Texas quarterback Colt McCoy said of his coach. i 'i 'A IK 4s lj itP: Kirkendoll, Marshall miss game Longhorns trainer Kenny Boyd said wide receiver James Kirkendoll and defensive tackle Thomas Marshall had to miss the game with injuries. Kirkendoll's left hip injury will keep the freshman out indefinitely, while Marshall's back injury will be re-evaluated next week to determine if he will be available for the Oklahoma State game. Lokey is busy Texas defensive tackle Derek Lokey was a busy man early on.

Not only did he face a little heat as the Cornhuskers came out running the football on their first series, but Lokey also played fullback on the next series as Texas tried to run on Nebraska. He played three plays at fullback, all successful runs. Lokey sat out the next defensive series. He played fullback sparingly throughout the game. Ralph Barrera amkrican statcsman A plethora of Texas defenders stops Nebraska l-back Marlon Lucky for a loss in the third quarter on Saturday.

Lucky gained 111 yards for the game, and the Nebraska offense kept fighting until the final whistle. 1 Cornhuskers happy with effort but not the result Keep your cards to yourself It wasn't 12 men on the field, but on a fourth-and-1 play, the Longhorns had an extra pice of equipment: Duane Akina's playcard. The Cornhuskers had completed a successful pass to make a first down when the Longhorns' defensive coordinator threw his card into the air in the middle of the play. The wind took it, and the card landed on the field in the same place that pass catcher Andy Sand was tackled by Sergio Kindle. Akina ran on the field and grabbed his card once the play was over.

Pinned but not stopped Twice in the first half, the Texas Longhorns' special teams pinned the Nebraska offense inside its 10 yard line. And twice the Cornhuskers gained a couple of first downs to prevent the Longhorns from getting great field position. The Cornhuskers also had the ball on their 7 in the third quarter. The result of the first play was a 10-yard run for a first down. "In the first half, we did a good job running the football," Watson said.

"We were hard-headed about running. We knew they were starting to bring the safeties to get involved in the run, and when that happens, it goes to our next phase." That included wide receiver Nate Swift, who caught six passes from Sam Keller and Joe Ganz for 112 yards, two touchdowns and a two-point conversion. Ganz came in.late in the fourth quarter after Keller suffered an unspecified injury. Ganz found Maurice Purify for a 4-yard touchdown pass with 1:55 left. Swift inflicted most of the damage Swift boating? by working the middle, including touchdowns covering 24 and 23 yards.

He said the play is called Fade Mash." "The safeties were playing really wide, and the middle was wide-open," Swift said. Swift's final catch was a two-point conversion after the final touchdown. But Texas recovered an onside kick, and Nebraska went home with its longest losing streak since 1961. "We're so tired to losing, so tired of going to class and having everybody asking you questions," safety Ben Eisenhart said. "We have to figure something out." mrosnerstatesman.com overall and 91st in points allowed among NCAA Division I-A teams.

Against Texas, they would not stand back and allow McCoy to pummel them with passes. "We didn't want to get him in a rhythm," Cos-grove said. "We wanted to be the attacker." Of course, as Cosgrove also said, "If you don't execute exactly right, there's a chance you can get hurt." Somebody gets blocked. Somebody gets out of position. Somebody gets around the corner, heads up the sideline and celebrates an 86-yard-touch-down run midway through the fourth quarter.

That would be Charles. "All it takes is one person being out of position," said Nebraska safety Larry Asante. "Somebody missed an assignment, and they made a good play," said Buddy Wyatt, Nebraska's defensive line coach. "The kid showed his speed and outran us to the corner." While Nebraska's defense eventually collapsed, allowing 545 yards, the offense persisted, finishing with 447. I-back Marlon Lucky gained 68 of his 111 yards in the first half, which Huskers offensive coordinator Shawn Watson believes induced the Longhorn safeties to come support the run defense.

By Mark Rosner AMKKIC.WSfrATESMAN S1AFK Conservative as a rule with his tactics, Nebraska defensive coordinator Kevin Cosgrove became a flaming liberal Saturday. The Cornhuskers threw everything at Texas but a bundle of The Nation They blitzed Texas on most plays, a startling alteration from the Huskers' normal approach, 19 percent on average. For three quarters, it worked. Nebraska had Colt McCoy on the run and the Longhorns trailing 17-9. Then the Huskers broke down, as is their wont this season on defense.

Jamaal Charles, not exactly the focus of the Huskers' game plan, burned them for 216 yards and two touchdowns in the fourth quarter. Charles finished with 290, the most ever by a Nebraska opponent. Texas finished with a 28-25 victory, handing Nebraska its fourth consecutive defeat. The Huskers' assessment: They tried. "Great effort," coach Bill Callahan said.

"Heartfelt." It's come to that for the struggling Huskers, embracing the effort if not the result. The Huskers have suffered on defense this season, ranking 115th against the run, 105th Quan's catch Quan Cosby was pushed out of bounds, and Colt McCoy's pass deflected off Nebraska cornerback Armando Dillard. Yet Cosby still came down with the ball. Cosby, hugging the sideline, caught the ill-advised pass from McCoy for a 36-yard gain early in the second quarter. The play was reviewed as Cosby stepped out of bounds, but it was upheld as the officials ruled he had been pushed.

B0HLS: Texas took time to clue into Nebraska's weakness So much for 19 percent Texas offensive coordinator Greg Davis wasn't expecting Nebraska to blitz much. "They blitz about 19 percent of the time," Davis said. The Cornhuskers were way over that percentage Saturday, blitzing on almost every play and often sending two or three guys from the secondary. The Longhorns did a good job picking up the blitzes and running away from the pressure as the Cornhuskers were unable to pick up a sack until the final play of the first half, when Texas was attempting a hail mary. "That was the most I've ever seen a team blitz," Mack Brown said.

vr fry v. 1 i Is Smokey a Cornhusker? As Ryan Bailey's 34-yard field goal attempt sailed wide, Cornhusker fans were celebrating. And they got some help from the Longhorns. Texas' Smokey the cannon went off as one of the Texas Cowboy operators must have thought the field goal was good. against a 4-5 Cornhusker team.

That said, Charles is holding onto the ball lately like it's the family trust fund and running straight ahead more often. The way he used to disdain siding with going north or south, you'd think he was a neutral Civil War buff. On this day, however, Charles gave a breakout performance at the perfect time with 290 yards to equal the fourth-best production in school history. Asked if the game was one the oft-maligned junior tailback needed to have, Texas coach Mack Brown said, "It was a game I needed Jamaal to have." Never has a head coach who reached his 100th win so quickly been second-guessed so much in a winning season. But many wondered if it'd take another century before the fans longing for the old days of 33 yards and a cloud of dust under Darrell Royal would see a downhill running attack like the one that garnered 248 yards on the ground in the fourth quarter alone and 364 overall.

The proceedings pleased former Longhorn great Roger Clemens, who took in the game with former Cornhusker and Yankee teammate Joba Chamberlain on the Texas sideline and kidded afterward that "Joba tried to get me to wear a Nebraska hat." That wasn't going to happen. So instead, Nebraska's gambling, bring-the-house-and-the-garage-and-the-back-patio defense got Texas to be more like Nebraska. The old pound 'em till they bleed Nebraska. "We were selling out," Nebraska interim athletic director and former option guru Tom Osborne noted on the sideline. "When we brought everybody, there was nobody left." This was no work of art.

But it was nice to see that Texas still can run on a day when the passing game was reduced to an afterthought. Few considered Saturday's matchup to be riveting fare beforehand, but a commitment like Nebraska's buzzing defense made serves as a reminder that the Longhorns have no easy games left. And a very hard route to a possible 10-2 season. But Texas might have learne 0 it can win with a throwback offense, the one where a team doesn't have to throw. Continued from CI against an underachieving but energized Nebraska team with nothing to lose except its coach, athletic director, trainer, etc.

In this upside-down season, good enough ain't all that bad. "Nervous? No, 'anxious' is a better word," Texas defensive end Brian Orakpo said of a 17-3 third-quarter deficit. "The nation was probably thinking, 'Here's one of them upsets But we didn't want to be in that same boat." That would be the boat with the gaping leak. But Texas plugged it. And kept plugging away at a running game that has been downright anemic much of the year with a talented running back who has been more butterfingered than the team's bread and butter option.

Jamaal Charles was positively breathtaking with 290 yards rushing, just 33 yards fewer than he had totaled in his past five games. And the 17th-ranked Longhorns rode him to a slim, 28-25 victory in front of Sugar and Gator bowl suitors and a crowd of 85,968 that can't quite decipher this Texas team. "It was my time," Charles said. It was past time. Never mind that every other team, probably including Nebraska's own scout team, has been running like crazy against Nebraska.

It took Texas three quarters to figure out the Cornhuskers deserved their 115th national ranking against the run. Once Greg Davis figured out the zone read might work, he fully embraced it, albeit way too late. The Texas offensive coordinator never did realize that it's legal to call screen passes and short passes to his excellent tight end, Jermichael Finley, to slow the pass rush from a Nebraska defense that blitzed at least four out of every five plays. Davis never considered that a few more plays with running quarterback John Chiles might just spring Charles as exactly happened on the one play Colt McCoy sat out after losing his bregth. And it's obvious that trick plays are reserved for Baylor and Rice.

What the Longhorns' third consecutive win Miller injured Defensive tackle Roy Miller left the game in the third quarter and was taken to the locker room to get X-rays on his ankle. Notable Jamaal Charles' 237 rushing yards in a half was four yards shy of the Texas school record of 241 by Hodges Mitchell against Kansas in 2000. Charles became the 21st Longhorn to rush for 1,000 yards in a season. Texas is 55-0 when recording more than 200 rushing yards during Mack Brown's tenure. Cosby recorded a career-high 113 receiving yards and has recorded a reception in 27 consecutive games.

Colt McCoy rushed for 40 or more yards for the third game. Alan Trubow Ralph Barrera amkkican-statksm an Head coach Mack Brown won his 100th game with a come-from-behind defeat of Nebraska, but it didn't seem likely until the Longhorns figured out some of Nebraska's flaws. since the loss to Oklahoma proved is they can play well enough in spurts to survive despite some stretches so ugly that the home unfaithful showered them with boos in the third quarter. Just don't be fooled into thinking Charles is the next Ricky Williams or that Texas has finally emerged as a dominant running team. Neither would be true.

But it did show both can happen on any given day, especially.