14 Husker Shining Moments in 2014

Randy York's N-Sider

For a quarter century, CBS has made One Shining Moment the anthem of its NCAA college basketball championship game, playing the song over a memorable montage of video highlights from the tournament as the triumphant team cuts down the nets. One Shining Moment is an appropriate link to reflect back as we count down the last days of 2014. Basketball is now a vital part of Nebraska's aspiring culture, especially in celebrating a year that included the Huskers' monumental 60-51 upset at perennial power Michigan State. I mention that shocker for two reasons: 1) David Barrett wrote One Shining Moment in 1986 after performing at the Varsity Inn in East Lansing, Michigan, and 2) the Huskers' meaningful milestone above in East Lansing did not make the 14 Shining Moments list after all the votes came in from our media relations panel. 

Shining Moment 1: Weatherholt Expands Huskers' Top Ten National Lead

Last January, former Husker and 2013 NCAA runner-up tennis player Mary Weatherholt (Prairie Village, Kansas) received the Top Ten Award, the most prestigious individual honor the NCAA presents. UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman and Nebraska Director of Athletics Shawn Eichorst attended the event in San Diego. Only 10 of neary 460,000 student-athletes earn this individual honor annually. Nebraska now has produced a nation-leading 17 Top Ten Award winners, two more than second-place Stanford.

Shining Moment 2: “No Sit Sunday” Sets the Tone for Upsetting Wisconsin

Nebraska men's basketball transformed its game-day experience, the result of a season that was sold out six months before the season opener. Terran Petteway, the first Nebraska male in 60 years to lead the conference in scoring, led the Huskers to a 15-1 record in their inaugural season at Pinnacle Bank Arena. The capstone to the magical 2013-14 season was No Sit Sunday, above, where a PBA record crowd of 15,998 fans inspired the Huskers' to a 77-68 upset of eventual NCAA Final Four qualifer Wisconsin

Shining Moment 3: Women’s Basketball Wins First Conference Tournament

For the first time in Nebraska women's basketball history, the Huskers won the postseason conference tournament, sweeping three teams to claim the Big Ten Championship Trophy in Indianapolis. En route to this historic accomplishment, Nebraska beat Minnesota (80-67), Michigan State (86-58) and Iowa (72-65) to win the tournament after finishing third in the regular-season standings. Then sophomore guard Rachel Theriot (Middleburg Heights, Ohio) earned first-team All-Big Ten honors and was named the Big Ten Tournament's Most Valuable Player.

Shining Moment 4: Young Volleyball Team Upsets Washington in Seattle

Nebraska's young, final No. 8-ranked volleyball team upset Washington this month in Seattle, disappointing 6,789 rowdy fans at Alaska Airlines Arena. Huskie students screamed behind the Husker bench throughout, stomping on bleachers to make hearing impossible during timeouts. Nebraska Coach John Cook and his team lost set one, but met the challenge with some of its best volleyball of the season. The Huskers rallied to win the 3-1 stunner, eliminating the tournament's third seed and ending Washington's 34-match home-court winning streak.

Shining Moment 5: Nebraska Basketball Teams Qualify for The Big Dance

Check out the photo above, showing what happens when the Nebraska men's basketball team expects to be invited to its first NCAA Tournament in 16 years. The media attention reflected the progress of Tim Miles and his team on Selection Sunday. Coach Connie Yori's women's basketball team won an NCAA Tournament game for a second straight year. The 2013-14 season marked the third time in Nebraska history that both the men's and women's programs qualified for the NCAA Tournament in the same year and the first time since the 1997-98 season.

Shining Moment 6: NU Women’s Gymnasts Again Reach NCAA’s Super Six

Two-time national coach of the year Dan Kendig led the Nebraska women's gymnastics team to a fourth consecutive conference championship and, for the 11th time in Kendig's 20 seasons at Nebraska, the Huskers advanced to the NCAA Super Six Finals in 2013-14. NCAA Academic and Athletic All-American Emily Wong (pictured above) led the Huskers for four years. The Grand Forks, N.D., native won the 2014 AAI Award, which is considered the Heisman Award for women's gymnastics. She is one of the top student-athletes in Husker history in all of sport.

Shining Moment 7: Baseball Wins NCAA Game, Sets NCAA Attendance Mark

Nebraska, coached by Darin Erstad, qualified for its first NCAA Baseball Tournament since 2008. The Huskers defeated Binghamton (N.Y.) in the NCAA Tournament after finishing second in both the Big Ten Conference regular-season standings and the Big Ten Tournament, which Nebraska hosted at Omaha's TD Ameritrade Park. The Big Ten Tournament drew 62,020 fans in five days. That total includes 19,965 fans for the Nebraska-Indiana Big Ten Championship game – the largest single-game conference tournament crowd in NCAA baseball history.

Shining Moment 8: Softball Wins Big Ten Title in Its Regular-Season Finale

Last June, Nebraska Hall-of-Fame Softball Coach Rhonda Revelle nearly led the Huskers back to Oklahoma City's Women's College World Series for a second straight season. Nebraska earned a share of the Big Ten Championship with Michigan on the final day of the regular season. The Huskers (18-5 in the Big Ten and 44-18 overall) went on to win a four-team NCAA Regional in Columbia, Mo., before advancing to a Super Regional at eventual NCAA runner-up Alabama, where they lost two one-run decisions that included a 12-inning thriller.

Shining Moment 9: Abdullah Sets Single-Game All-Purpose Yardage Record

Ameer Abdullah carved his name into Husker history with a school record 341 all-purpose yards in Nebraska's 42-24 win over Rutgers. His runs and returns made him almost untouchable. On back-to-back first-half carries, Abdullah had touchdown runs of 53 and 48 yards. He started the second half with a 49-yard burst and exploded 23 yards untouched with 8:07 remaining. His 225 rushing yards fueled his 341 all-purpose yards, 20 more than previous Husker record-holder Roy Helu Jr.

Shining Moment 10: Miles Ukaoma Wins NCAA’s 400-Meter Hurdle Title

Miles Ukaoma (Maize, Kansas) won the 400-meter hurdles at the 2014 NCAA National Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon. Even though he was honored on Tom Osborne Field during a football game, Ukaoma has no regrets about declining football scholarship offers from Missouri, Kansas State and Kansas. The four-time Husker All-American "loved" his Nebraska track and field experiences. An Advertising major, he graduated this month and competes for his home country, Nigeria. His goal is to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Shining Moment 11: This Time, Westerkamp Goes Behind His Own Back

Jordan Westerkamp's 2013 "Hail Mary" catch that beat Northwestern is the only walk-off play in Nebraska football history. Westerkamp's behind-the-back catch in the Huskers' season-opening win over Florida Atlantic is equally incomparable. Westerkamp going behind his own back to make a catch he could not see was a solid winner as the college football "Play of the Year" in ESPN's annual televised awards show in Orlando. I'll admit it. I can't wait to see Westerkamp's 2015 encore.

Shining Moment 12: Husker Women Bowlers Finish 2014 NCAA Runner-up

If you you're looking for a 2014 Husker storyline that combines adversity with a high level of success, Nebraska's runner-up finish in the NCAA's nationally televised finals is a compelling winner. The Huskers were temporarily without head coach Bill Straub when they launched the 2014 season. With Nebraska's longtime leader recovering from emergency heart surgery, assistant coach Paul Klempa led the Huskers to three regular-season tournament titles and to the NCAA Championship match in Cleveland, Ohio, where they lost to Sam Houston State.

Shining Moment 13: Pierson-El NU's First Freshman FWAA All-American

De'Mornay Pierson-El became the first freshman in Nebraska history to earn All-America honors from the Football Writers Association of America (FWAA). The Alexandria, Va., native is just the second Husker underclassman to earn FWAA honors. Bobby Reynolds is the only other former Husker with that distinction 64 years ago. A double-barrelled receive/return threat, Pierson-El led the nation in punt returns with 589 yards and three touchdowns, including a fourth-quarter 80-yard TD in Nebraska's biggest road comeback in school history at Iowa.

Shining Moment 14: 117 Letterwinners Complete Top Goal – Graduation

We started this column with the epitome of individual academic/athletic success, and we end it with a sentence that deserves 117 exclamation points because 117 Nebraska letterwinners graduated in 2014 in three commencement ceremonies last May, last August and last week. All three cap/gown/sheepskin events were held at Pinnacle Bank Arena, the home of Nebraska basketball's two anchor tenants and the primary destination of every student-athlete recruit or walk-on who makes the decision to become part of our Husker family. Mara Weekes (above) is a native of Bridgetown, Barbados. A sprinter, she accepted a Nebraska track and field scholarship, earned All-America indoor honors on a relay team and leaves UNL with a degree in Child, Youth and Family Studies. She had years of shining moments living and competing in Lincoln and her warm smile at last weekend's commencement is proof that she made a wise choice.

Happy New Year and Go Big Red!

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