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Published Wednesday October 18, 2000 NU Linemen Enjoy Squashing Opponents BY STEVEN PIVOVAR
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Lincoln - Offensive linemen are easy to spot around Nebraska's football complex this week.

They're the guys wearing smiles a mile wide.

The Huskers are coming off a dominating offensive performance against Texas Tech, piling up 540 yards and 56 points. What makes the effort special for the linemen was how it was achieved.

"Those guys had a lot of fun in a game where they did pretty much whatever they wanted," said I-back Dan Alexander, who ran for 113 yards against the Red Raiders. "There were a couple of times when the coaches were asking questions about what Texas Tech was doing out there.

"I remember Russ Hochstein saying at one point, 'It doesn't matter what they're doing. We're able to stop it.' They were playing dominant football, playing their techniques and working hard. And when they're doing that, it doesn't matter what the other team tries to do. There definitely were some huge holes out there to run through."

Nebraska chewed through Texas Tech's defense for 442 rushing yards on a season-high 77 attempts. The bulk of that yardage came by running up the middle. According to the official play-by-play, Nebraska ran 14 option plays, two reverses and 61 plays between the tackles.

In their previous games, the Huskers had been relying heavily on the option attack that was exposing quarterback Eric Crouch to extensive wear and tear. Crouch carried 12 times against Texas Tech, compared to an average of 21.5 times in the previous games against Missouri and Iowa State.

Overall, Nebraska had 11 backs carry the ball against the Red Raiders. Alexander led the parade with 113 yards on 20 carries, while Correll Buckhalter added 105 on 13 carries, Dahrran Diedrick 53 on seven attempts and Crouch 52 on his 12.

"Things were clicking," said Hochstein, the starting right guard. "When you start to wear the other team down and you can see it, it's an uplifting feeling. When you do that, you want to continue doing it the rest of the year.

"We just basically told the coaches on the side to run what we wanted to run, and we'll take care of things. That shows the experience we have up front. We have a lot of guys who have been around for a while, and that really shows in a situation like that."

For the third straight game and for the fourth time this season, left guard Toniu Fonoti led the Huskers in knockdown blocks. He had a season-high 19 pancakes, pushing his total to 98.

"We did what we sought out to do in that game," Fonoti said. "Some people doubted that we'd be able to move the ball against a defense that was ranked pretty high. But we just had it in our minds that we were going to run the ball as many times as we could.

"That's what we did, and we all felt good about it in the end."

The linemen doubled their pleasure by overwhelming a defense that had been ranked second nationally in total defense.

"We hurt them with that straight-up-the-middle stuff," Fonoti said. "It felt good just knocking people around."

The Huskers had plenty of guys do the knocking. Eleven linemen recorded at least one pancake as the reserves played much of the final 17 minutes of the game. Tackle Dan Waldrop and center Matt Shook each recorded his first pancake of the season, with Waldrop finishing with five.

The reserve linemen might get another shot at some extensive playing time Saturday when Baylor visits Memorial Stadium for a 12:30 p.m. game. The 2-4 Bears are 49-point underdogs.

That hardly matters to the Husker linemen. Having pounded home a point against Texas Tech, they want to put another dominating performance together against Baylor.

"We put a complete game together against Texas Tech, but our challenge now is to do that week after week," center Dominic Raiola said. "If we do that every week, no one is going to be able to beat us.

"We showed that we can take what teams give us. If they give us the option, we'll use it. If they try to take that away, we'll run the ball right at teams. We'll play power football."