Nebraska Blew a 17-6 Fourth-Quarter Lead and Lost to Indiana Again — 31 Straight Against Ranked Teams

The short version: For 48 minutes on Saturday, Nebraska looked like the program its fans have been waiting a decade to see again. Then the fourth quarter started, and the Huskers did what the Huskers do. No. 5 Indiana stormed back from a 17-6 deficit in the final 12 minutes to beat Nebraska 20-17 at a sold-out Memorial Stadium — the Hoosiers' 22nd straight win, and Nebraska's 31st consecutive loss to a ranked team. The sellout streak hit 415. The ranked-team losing streak hit a number nobody wants to say out loud.

How Nebraska lost it

This one will sting in Lincoln for a long time, because the Huskers had it. They had it completely. After receiving the opening kickoff, quarterback Anthony Colandrea marched Nebraska 66 yards in 13 plays for a field goal, answered Indiana's matching three with a 10-play, 75-yard touchdown drive finished by Nyziah Hunter's 10-yard scoring run, and dominated the first half statistically — 216 yards to Indiana's 115, nearly 22 and a half minutes of possession to barely seven and a half. FOX's Big Noon Kickoff was in town. The crowd of 85,653 was deafening. Indiana spent the week practicing silent counts.

When Colandrea capped a 39-yard touchdown drive to make it 17-6 with 12:01 to play, Memorial Stadium shook. And then, in the span of about five minutes of game time, it all came apart.

First play from its own 25: Josh Hoover finds Nick Marsh over the middle, and Marsh runs through a busted Nebraska secondary for a 75-yard touchdown. 17-13. Nebraska goes three-and-out. Then the dagger: fourth down, 7:13 left, Hoover play-actions with the Huskers selling out to stop the run, and hits Marsh again — 44 yards, touchdown, 20-17 Indiana. Nebraska's final two possessions ended the same way: turnover on downs, first when Colandrea was sacked for a six-yard loss, then on an incompletion to Gilmer. Ballgame.

The loudest room in America wasn't enough

Give Nebraska this: the atmosphere was everything the program's mythology promises. The 415th consecutive sellout — a streak that laps the field, with Oklahoma's 169 a distant second — turned Memorial Stadium into exactly the cauldron Indiana spent all week preparing for. The Hoosiers practiced at their own Memorial Stadium with crowd noise cranked to the max and drilled their silent count for a second straight week, a lesson learned the hard way in a 2024 loss at Ohio State when the Buckeyes timed their pass rush to Indiana's non-verbal cadence. Cignetti said this week the noise in practice "was pretty loud." Saturday in Lincoln was louder.

And for 48 minutes, it worked. The crowd carried Nebraska's defense through a first half where Indiana managed 115 yards and held the ball for less than eight minutes. Colandrea looked composed, the offensive line moved people, and the student section had every reason to believe this was the afternoon the streak died. That's what makes the collapse so brutal — it wasn't a game Nebraska stole and gave back. It was a game Nebraska owned and dropped.

The streaks, because they matter

Indiana has now won 22 games in a row — the fifth-longest winning streak by a Big Ten team in the last 80 years — and is 33-2 under Curt Cignetti, the defending national champions sitting at 6-0. "It's a great road win," Cignetti said afterward, which might be the understatement of the season given his team was getting worked for three quarters.

Nebraska's number is the one that defines the program right now: 31 straight losses to ranked teams, dating back to a 35-32 win over Oregon in 2016. A decade. Ten years of getting close and finding new ways to lose the big one — and Saturday was the platonic ideal of it. Dominate for 48 minutes, blow a two-score fourth-quarter lead at home, in front of the 415th consecutive sellout, with the whole country watching the Big Noon game. The FOX cameras found a Nebraska fan doing the throat-slash "choke" gesture, and honestly, he was just narrating.

What it means

For Indiana, it's another week, another win, another step toward a playoff run that looks increasingly inevitable. The Hoosiers didn't play well for most of Saturday and still left Lincoln 6-0. That's what championship teams do.

For Nebraska, the cruel part is that this team might actually be improved. Matt Rhule's Huskers are 5-1, the defense was excellent for three quarters, and Colandrea moved the ball. But "improved" doesn't mean anything in Lincoln until the ranked-team streak dies, and Saturday was the best chance they'll get for a while — at home, sold out, up two scores in the fourth. They head to Oregon next Saturday, and the streak will be waiting for them there, too.

The sellout streak is 415 games long. It has now witnessed 31 consecutive losses to ranked opponents. At some point the streak that matters in Lincoln isn't the attendance one.

Previously's Nebraska sports desk tracks the Huskers every week. Read more local sports from every state.