Winless Nebraska visits Northwestern for homecoming
Following its biggest win of the season, Northwestern will host winless Nebraska Saturday in the Wildcats’ 2018 homecoming.
After a tumultuous three-game losing streak, the Wildcats bounced back in a big way last Saturday, defeating then 20th-ranked Michigan State, 29-19, in East Lansing.
Northwestern extended its winning streak against the Spartans to three games, and now shifts its focus to a struggling but talented Nebraska team hungry for its first win of the season.
Nebraska coach Scott Frost was hired during the offseason to take the reins of his alma mater following an undefeated season as head coach at UCF in 2017, for which he was named AP Coach of the Year.
“I have a ton of respect for Scott,” Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald said. “He’s got a blueprint for what he’s going to do, and you can see it already … I think he’s got a great blueprint and he’s got an outstanding staff.”
Frost and Fitzgerald both share the unique and often burdensome job of coaching their alma maters, joining Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh and Wisconsin’s Paul Chryst as the only current Big Ten coaches at the helm of their former schools.
Fitzgerald was a linebacker for the Wildcats from 1993-96, and Frost was the quarterback for Nebraska from 1995-97.
“Going back to his alma mater, I know how that feels,” Fitzgerald said of Frost, who is off to an inauspicious 0-5 start in his first season with the Cornhuskers. “There’s just something a little bit more when you’re at your alma mater. It just means more. It means more when you win, it hurts more when you don’t win … you’re going to have a hard time finding a more competitive person for our schools than probably both of us.”
Nebraska’s rough start to the season has been impacted by a number of mitigating circumstances, including the cancellation of its season opener against Akron due to inclement weather as well as a string of injuries.
One bright spot for the Cornhuskers has been the play of freshman quarterback Adrian Martinez, who ranks second in the conference in total offense, averaging 292.3 yards per game.
“You can see that this team has improved every week,” Fitzgerald said of Nebraska. “I think Adrian Martinez is going to be — and he already is — but is going to be an outstanding football player. He’s a magician right now. I think he makes a lot of things happen.”
Martinez became the first true freshman in Nebraska history to be named the starting quarterback for a season opener.