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2009 Sep 28
Pelini on Mizzou: "It's a New Year"
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Ten days before Nebraska’s Thursday night tilt with Missouri head coaches Bo Pelini and Gary Pinkel offered their initial assessments of the opponent, along with a few pointers for their own bunches.
“Really good football team,” Pinkel said of Nebraska. “Obviously they re-established a great tradition they’ve had over many, many, many years. Very impressed with them on both sides of the ball. Very disciplined. The Virginia Tech game came down to one kinda fluke play, or they would have won that.”
Pelini’s comments on Mizzou were brief, perfunctory and positive: “Good football team. Well-coached.”
One that NU’s players seemed motivated to play in the moments after their 55-0 win over Louisiana-Lafayette Saturday night, especially considering the stage (ESPN Thursday night), last year’s 52-17 blowout Tiger win in Lincoln and the relative importance in relation to the Big 12 North title.
While Pelini considers any division team a potential rival, he said NU isn’t looking backward.
“It’s a new year,” he said. “I don’t get caught up in what happened last year or recent history or anything else. We’re going to go play a football game, and it’s the next game on the schedule, and that’s how we’ll treat it.”
Pinkel, whose Tigers are 4-0 after a 31-21 win at Nevada last Friday night, would like to see more progress in the running game that is tenth in the Big 12 at 143 yards per game. NU is ninth in the Big 12, but gaining 5.7 yards per carry. Mizzou only averaging 3.8 yards.
“When we had Chase Daniel, if they overloaded on the run, we just wouldn’t run it,” Pinkel said, referring to his now-graduated quarterback. “We’d throw 15 times in a row until they backed out.”
With sophomore Blaine Gabbert, Pinkel said, “we want to run the ball more so there’s a little bit of a conflict there.”
NU is licking some wounds in the secondary. Starting strong safety Larry Asante is “fine” after leaving with a bruised leg on Saturday night. However, backup safety and special teams dynamo Rickey Thenarse is “out for awhile,” Pelini said, with a knee injury.
“I feel good about our depth at safety,” Pelini said. “We’re a lot deeper there than we were a year ago.”
NU’s coaches will be recruiting for a big chunk of the next two days.
A Look at Mizzou's Run Game
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“Really good football team,” Pinkel said of Nebraska. “Obviously they re-established a great tradition they’ve had over many, many, many years. Very impressed with them on both sides of the ball. Very disciplined. The Virginia Tech game came down to one kinda fluke play, or they would have won that.”
Pelini’s comments on Mizzou were brief, perfunctory and positive: “Good football team. Well-coached.”
One that NU’s players seemed motivated to play in the moments after their 55-0 win over Louisiana-Lafayette Saturday night, especially considering the stage (ESPN Thursday night), last year’s 52-17 blowout Tiger win in Lincoln and the relative importance in relation to the Big 12 North title.
While Pelini considers any division team a potential rival, he said NU isn’t looking backward.
“It’s a new year,” he said. “I don’t get caught up in what happened last year or recent history or anything else. We’re going to go play a football game, and it’s the next game on the schedule, and that’s how we’ll treat it.”
Pinkel, whose Tigers are 4-0 after a 31-21 win at Nevada last Friday night, would like to see more progress in the running game that is tenth in the Big 12 at 143 yards per game. NU is ninth in the Big 12, but gaining 5.7 yards per carry. Mizzou only averaging 3.8 yards.
“When we had Chase Daniel, if they overloaded on the run, we just wouldn’t run it,” Pinkel said, referring to his now-graduated quarterback. “We’d throw 15 times in a row until they backed out.”
With sophomore Blaine Gabbert, Pinkel said, “we want to run the ball more so there’s a little bit of a conflict there.”
NU is licking some wounds in the secondary. Starting strong safety Larry Asante is “fine” after leaving with a bruised leg on Saturday night. However, backup safety and special teams dynamo Rickey Thenarse is “out for awhile,” Pelini said, with a knee injury.
“I feel good about our depth at safety,” Pelini said. “We’re a lot deeper there than we were a year ago.”
NU’s coaches will be recruiting for a big chunk of the next two days.
A Look at Mizzou's Run Game
Join Husker Locker today - it's free!
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Tags: bo pelini, gary pinkel, ten days of tigers
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