COLUMBIA, Mo. - Out of the darkness, and into the driver’s seat of the Big 12 North.

Faced with a 12-0 deficit at the beginning of the fourth quarter - having played some of the worst offensive football in recent memory - Nebraska’s football team turned on an unexpected switch, staging the largest final-quarter comeback in school history and taking an early – and crucial – lead in its league division.

NU scored three touchdowns in four minutes – assisted by two interceptions of Mizzou quarterback Blaine Gabbert – to win 27-12 in front of Faurot Field’s 65,286 stunned, soaked fans, who sat through a 15-minute power outage one hour before the game and nearly three hours of the Tigers playing sloppy – but winning – football.

That changed one minute into the fourth, when quarterback Zac Lee – who almost yanked by offensive coordinator Shawn Watson – threw a 56-yard touchdown to wide receiver Niles Paul - who was yanked to start the second half – to cut Mizzou’s lead to 12-7.

“We caught them in a good coverage, and the safety played the middle hook route, and we got a post over the top,” Lee said. “That play really sparked us.”

Then defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh picked off the third pass of his career at the Tigers’ 18-yard line. Lee hit Paul again, seven seconds later, from 13 yards to give NU the lead for good.

“We just kept fighting,” head coach Bo Pelini said. “You can get down in situations like that, when things aren’t going your way and it’s pretty easy to feel sorry for yourself and let the game get away from you. We never let the game get away with us…I thought we showed a lot of character in every aspect.”

Once the Tigers fell behind, NU made sure not to give it back, either. Junior cornerback Dejon Gomes, who’d played sparingly until Thursday night, intercepted another Gabbert pass on Missouri’s next drive, returning it to the Tiger 10-yard line.

“The receiver broke out, I broke out with him, and I was in perfect position to look back at the quarterback,” Gomes said. “The ball was right there.”

Lee then threw his third touchdown pass of the night, an eight-yard floater to tight end Mike McNeill, who was wide open after blocking and pretending to stumble. Lee drew the defense to himself, then tossed into an open space, where McNeill ran under it.

“I just wanted to make sure I caught it,” McNeill said.

So Nebraska led 20-12, and forced a turnover on downs on Mizzou’s next drive, which briefly reached NU’s 22-yard line before a holding penalty – one of eight overall penalties – pushed the Tigers back to the 32. Gabbert threw four incomplete passes after that.

“There were a zillion penalties,” Mizzou coach Gary Pinkel said.

NU ran the ball eight straight times for a final touchdown, highlighted by Roy Helu’s 41-yard sideline gallop. Helu, suffering from the flu, didn’t arrive in Columbia until Thursday morning.

By the end, Missouri fans were filing out, while a small, raucous contingency of Huskers waved them goodbye.

“It wasn’t the exact way we wanted to win,” Suh said. “But we’ll take it.”

Pelini said Suh – and the rest of the NU defense, which may be in line for a Blackshirt promotion after this – kept the Huskers in the game while the offense sputtered. Missouri gained just 225 yards, punted eight times and scored only ten points – and all of those came on a short field. Derrick Washington gained 80 yards on 20 carries, but never busted a long one until the game had been decided.

“They played their you-know-whats off,” Pelini said. “They played hard, they played well. And you can say that about everybody who lined up on defense. We played some pretty good football.”

The secondary repeatedly challenged Mizzou’s receivers – and won the battles. Gabbert, meanwhile, seemed out of sorts most of the night, and could have thrown more interceptions than the two he did – the Huskers had their hands on a number of his passes, which often looked telegraphed.

“He struggled a little bit,” Pinkel said of Gabbert, who completed just 17-of-43 passes for 134 yards and two interceptions.

Before the final quarter, Lee struggled a lot more than that. He’d lost a fumble, and completed just 9-of-27 passes heading into the final quarter.

“There was a time I was actually going to put Cody (Green) in and have him sit down and let him look at it a little bit,” Watson said. “But he’s just got great character. I thought about it for about a half-second and said ‘Nah.’

“He’s such a great competitor that he kept fighting through it.”

Said Lee: “The coaches trusted us. They have our back. We have their back.”

Nevertheless, Missouri forged a 12-0 lead with a big help from the offense and special teams. MU scored a safety when punter Alex Henery was forced to throw the ball out of his own end zone after a bad snap - one of several - from true freshman P.J. Mangieri. The Tigers' touchdown drive started on the NU 44-yard line. Its third-quarter field goal drive started at the NU 34.

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