The rosters for Saturday’s Red-White Spring Game have been announced, and like Coach Bo Pelini’s first two seasons, the teams appear to be fairly evenly divided.

The White team will be quarterbacked by sophomore Cody Green and senior Latravis Washington. The offense will have plenty of firepower with I-backs Roy Helu Jr. and Dontrayevous Robinson, along with receiving targets Niles Paul, Mike McNeill and Dreu Young. Up front, center Mike Caputo and tackle D.J. Jones are the leaders of the White offensive line.

Defensively, the White squad boasts a number of players with significant starting experience, led by junior defensive tackle Jared Crick and senior end Pierre Allen. Sean Fisher heads the linebacking corps, while the secondary features Alfonzo Dennard, DeJon Gomes and Rickey Thenarse.

Offensive coordinator Shawn Watson leads the White coaching staff, along with Barney Cotton, John Papuchis, Marvin Sanders and offfensive graduate assistant Curt Baldus.

Redshirt freshman Taylor Martinez and sophomore Kody Spano will quarterback the Red unit, while redshirt freshman Ron Kellogg III is expected to see action on both teams. Keith Williams and Marcel Jones lead the Red offensive line, with I-back Rex Burkhead and receivers Brandon Kinnie and Curenski Gilleylen among the top offensive weapons.

Defensively, sophomores Baker Steinkuhler and Cameron Meredith lead the Red front four, with Will Compton the most experienced linebacker on the Red squad. Veterans Eric Hagg, Prince Amukamara and Anthony West will patrol the Red secondary, while all-conference place-kicker/punter Alex Henery heads up the Red special teams.

Defensive coordinator Carl Pelini heads up the Red coaching staff, along with Tim Beck, Ron Brown, Mike Ekeler, Ted Gilmore and defensive graduate assistant Ross Watson.

Kickoff for Saturday’s spring game is set for 1 p.m. at Memorial Stadium. ? Tickets are still available at huskers.com

(Info courtesy of Huskers.Com)


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Coming off a blowout victory over Florida Atlantic in their first game, the Nebraska Cornhuskers are know looking ahead to their upcoming game on Saturday against Arkansas State. Currently the Huskers are favored by 24 points but this game could be a lot closer than that when you start to break things down.

Arkansas State has a great defensive end by the name of Alex Carrington. Carrington is already projected to be a second round draft pick in the NFL draft and he will put a lot of pressure on the Husker offensive line and running backs who will have to pick him up at times. The 6-foot-5, 285 pound defense end collected 10.5 sacks and 19 tackles for loss last season.

With Carrington and the rest of the defense, Arkansas State held Mississipi State to just 69 yards of total offense as they dominated the entire game. The offense was just as good as the defense as well as they rolled up nearly 500 yards. Look for them to try and establish the run to setup their passes. I expect the Husker defense to really key in on the run and this week look for Pierre Allen and Barry Turner to have a much better game compared to last Saturday against FAU.

On offense for the Huskers I expect Roy Helu, Jr. to have a huge day. The Red Wolves like to run a 4-2-5 defense and that means if Helu gets by the initial four man front he is going to have a hay day. He will make those two linebackers miss and next thing you know he will be at the safeties and causing a lot of havoc in the seconday.

My finaly prediction will be something like 42-21 with the Big Red moving to 2-0 on the season. Do you agree?


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Hope everyone’s Labor Day weekend is going good! I had hoped to get this up after the game on Saturday evening but had a few things come up and then I was busy all day on Sunday. Anyways, the Huskers started off the 2009 season with a 49-3 victory over Florida Atlantic and rather than go through with a big recap of the game, I’ll just hit on some positives and a couple negatives that I took from the game.

The Positives:
Quarterback play with Zac Lee. Lee was 15 of 22 for 213 yards and two touchedowns. Lee found wide receivers Menelik Holt and Curenski Gilleylen for his touchdown passes. Lee did throw one interception which was a badly underthrown ball. Not bad for the first outing for Lee.

Roy Helu Jr. picked up where he left off in the 2008 season. Helu, Jr. ran for 152 yards on just 16 carries. He picked up most of his yards in the third quarter when he scored his second and third touchdowns of the game. Great game for Roy!

The play of true freshman Cody Green and Rex Burkhead. I thought Green and Burkhead played about as good as they could in their first college action. Green stood out more because of his long 49 yard run but he also threw for 18 yards on two of three passes. Burkhead showed glimpses of what he can do as he rushed for 39 yards on nine carries.

They play by the young linebackers. The linebackers had a combined 17 tackles on the night as Blake Lawrence and Sean Fisher led the way with six tackles each. If this group stays healthy and continues to get better, the Huskers will have one very stingy defense!

Some negatives from the game:

The play of defensive ends Pierre Allen and Barry Turner. The two simply did not get pressure on the Florida Atlantic quarterbacks like I expected. The Huskers were able to get some pressue up the middle with Jared Crick and Ndamukong Suh which was nice but I just wanted to see more out of Allen and Turner.

The owls were able to get 358 yards which is way to many yards against a Sun Belt conference team. I do give the defense credit however because they allowed just three points on the scoreboard.

Overall it was a good first game and it gives the Huskers something to build on for this weekends game against Arkansas State. The game will once again be on Pay-Per-View but this time it will be a 1 P.M. central timezone kickoff.

What were your thoughts on the game? Leave us a comment and let us know!


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Saturday was the day everyone has been waiting for as the Nebraska Cornhuskers kicked off the 2009 season with fan day inside of Memorial Stadium and then later conducted their first practice of the season. I was not able to make the seven hour drive down to Lincoln to partake in the festivities but after talking with others and reading some reports here is what everyone was talking about.

The Huskers will try to build on their Gator Bowl win over Clemson and know that they need to continue to work hard if they want to have the season they are capable of.

The defensive line is going to dominate this year and hopefully that will result in more interceptions for the secondary Larry Asante commented on.

Expect big things from Brandon Kinnie who is a sophomore junior college transfer. Kinnie has a big body similar to ex-husker Mo Purify.

Barry Turner and Kody Spano are both back and both are 100%. Turner will hold down one end spot while Pierre Allen will hold down the other end. Expect big things from Turner and Allen in 2009!

Chris Williams, Cruz Barrett, William Yancy and Quentin Toailoa were not included on the 105-man roster that Coach Pelini released. Williams was not included on the roster due to the fact that he is not 100% recovered from his knee injury. Expect Williams to be added to the roster but probably use up a redshirt this season.

As for Barrett, Yancy and Toailoa, I would not expect to see much of them in their career. When you are not included on the 105-man roster, that means you cannot report to the team until the first day of class and are pretty much at the lowest spot on the depth chart.

There were three freshman that really stood out to the coaches after the first practice. Eric Martin, Jason Ankrah and Lazari Middleton impressed the coaching staff. It will he interesting to see how the freshman progress through the next month of practices leading up to the first game and if they will see the field.

That’s all for now as I need to hit the road for a birthday party. Hope everyone has a good weekend and I hope to have another report about practice when I get home.


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