Nebraska’s Flowers Gets 208 Yards, Takes Wind Out of Cyclones, 45-13

Leodis Flowers is on a roll, and he’s taking the Nebraska Cornhuskers with him.

Flowers topped the 100-yard mark for the sixth consecutive game on Saturday, rushing for a personal-record 208 yards and scoring three touchdowns to lead a big-play offense that carried No. 4 Nebraska to a 45-13 victory over Iowa State.

The junior tailback’s big day included a 70-yard touchdown run in the first minute of the third quarter to help the unbeaten Cornhuskers break the game open after they rallied from a 10-3 deficit.

“The line did a great job and the receivers did a great job blocking downfield. That was the difference,” said Flowers, who had six runs of 10 yards or more among his 25 carries. “We just wanted to keep pounding the ball at them. In the end, we knew that would pay off.”

It did. The Cornhuskers, 8-0 overall and 4-0 in the Big Eight, ran 70 times for 557 yards and had 624 total yards.

“We ran the ball well today, but we’ll probably be criticized for not throwing the ball enough,” said Nebraska Coach Tom Osborne, whose team tried only four passes. “We’ll have a chance to throw the ball on down the line many times. We feel confident we can throw the ball and probably will in our next few games.”

Flowers’ string of 100-yard games is the longest by a Nebraska back since Mike Rozier had 12 in a row in 1983, the year Rozier won the Heisman Trophy. The best game previously for Flowers, a junior, had been 151 yards against Oregon State this year.

Quarterback Mickey Joseph carried eight times for 123 yards and broke a 70-yard run in the third quarter to set up a Flowers touchdown. Joseph also threw two touchdown passes to freshman tight end Johnny Mitchell as Nebraska beat Iowa State (3-4-1, 1-2-1) for the 13th consecutive time.

Iowa State, playing before a record Cyclone Stadium crowd of 54,475, was coming off a 33-31 upset of Oklahoma.

Quarterback Chris Pedersen’s inability to run--he had run for 148 yards and two touchdowns against Oklahoma, but Nebraska held him to 18 yards in 11 carries and sacked him four times--and the absence of star running back Blaise Bryant, out with a rib injury, made it a frustrating afternoon for Iowa State Coach Jim Walden. Upset when the officials ruled that Nebraska’s Jon Bostick had made a legal catch and not trapped the ball, Walden kicked a ball laying on the sidelines.

“Did it go through?” he asked later.

Iowa State had Nebraska in a 10-10 tie late in the first half, but the Cornhuskers scored in the final minute of the half, then got three touchdowns in a 10-minute span in the third quarter to take control.

“This week, I had to create an offense against one of the best defenses in the country,” Walden said. “They are good, and don’t let anyone tell you that they haven’t played anybody. They will be just as good when someone finally decides that they are playing somebody, and I think that will probably happen next week.”

Nebraska plays 10th-ranked Colorado next Saturday.