The Gophers were averaging 44.3 rushing yards in Big Ten play, the least in the conference. They were giving up 174.7 rushing yards in league play, 16th among conference teams. <\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, confidence wasn\u2019t in abundance with many followers of the team entering Friday night\u2019s game against No. 25 Nebraska, a team averaging 41 points per game.<\/p>\n
Instead, the Gophers crumpled those statistics, threw them away and went out and dominated the Cornhuskers 24-6 in front of an announced 48,549 at Huntington Bank Stadium. Fans stormed the field as the victory became final.<\/p>\n
Behind a defense that sacked Huskers quarterback Dylan Raiola a program single-game record nine times, Darius Taylor\u2019s 148 rushing yards and quarterback Drake Lindsey\u2019s efficient 16-for-20, 153-yard passing night, the Gophers improved to 5-2 overall and 3-1 in the Big Ten with their most complete effort of the season.<\/p>\n
The Gophers have beaten Nebraska six consecutive times, and they are 7-1 vs. the Cornhuskers under coach P.J. Fleck. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur players were relentless,\u201d Fleck said. \u201cThey set the tone from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nebraska (5-2, 2-2) never got its offense going because Anthony Smith and Karter Menz (2\u00bd sacks each), Jaxon Howard (two sacks) and Deven Eastern and Matt Kingsbury (one sack each) harassed Raiola all night. Raiola finished 17-for-25 for 177 yards with 63 yards lost to sacks. Nebraska\u2019s offensive output consisted of two short field goals by Kyle Cunanan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m looking at Jaxon Howard, I\u2019m looking at Karter Menz,\u201d Smith said. \u201cEverybody gets a sack. It\u2019s like an Oprah Winfrey thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Gophers were averaging 44.3 rushing yards in Big Ten play, the least in the conference. They were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-233969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}