By james art You won’t catch Matt Rhule obsessing over the number that has hung over the Nebraska football program for years: six.
As the Huskers prepare to host UCLA on Saturday, it’s another opportunity to earn a sixth win that would send Nebraska to the program’s first bowl game since 2016. So far in Rhule’s coaching tenure with the Huskers, finding that gap hasn’t gone away well — Nebraska is 0-6 entering the contest with five wins under Rhule.
“We were 5-3 last year and we played Michigan State and we lost and we lost the rest of them; we were chasing something,” Ruhl said Monday. “We came out to Indiana, we were 5-1, and I felt like the guys were maybe chasing something a little bit — so I said I didn’t do a good enough job of getting them in the right mindset.
The only thing Nebraska was chasing Saturday was an upset win and a chance to show that the huge loss to Indiana wasn’t a sign of things to come. Building on his postgame comments that the Huskers displayed a “championship mindset” against Ohio State, Rhule said he saw glimpses of that earlier this season.
Never before, though, had Rhule seen a fully unified Nebraska locker room that was willing to take the risks to prove it belonged.
“Indiana came after us and we came back last week and played to play; we were freed to redeem our name, play for pride and play with heart and character,” he said. “I’m not going to talk about anything but that this week; you learned what it looks like against Ohio State, so move on.”
For all the looming bowl game potential and the difference of entering the second bye week with a 6-3 record instead of 5-4, Nebraska’s coaching staff is focused on making sure its improvements against Ohio State aren’t just a one-week stretch correction.
That’s especially important on defense, which are the areas where Nebraska struggled against Indiana — stopping the run, missing tackles and completing their assignments — turned into strengths.
“When you watch some of the guys play, I thought it was the best the defense (has) looked — not the results — but that was the best some of our guys on defense have looked so far,” Ruhl said. “They played with a unique ruthlessness that they’ve now put on record, so now they have a standard to match.”
Nebraska’s upcoming game against UCLA comes as the final leg of a three-week stretch in which Ruhl said the Huskers played two “Top 10 teams” in Indiana and Ohio.
The Bruins, 2-5 overall and 1-4 in conference play, aren’t the same caliber of opponent, though no game can be taken for granted in the Big Ten.
UCLA’s lone conference win over Rutgers featured a season-high 35 points on offense to snap a five-game losing streak, and after the bye week, the Bruins will have an extra week to prepare for Nebraska.
What the Husker head coach and the entire fanbase are waiting to see, however, is which version of the Nebraska football team will show up on Saturday — the one that rolled against Indiana or the one that fought for 60 minutes against the Buckeyes?
“I think our team, (in) our mindset, we’ve learned a lot the last two weeks and now we have to move forward against UCLA and get to a bye week and then play three more,” Ruhl said. “The same intensity we had last week because we got embarrassed 56-7, we have to have the same intensity this week.”