LINCOLN — Bo Pelini offered a pretty standard description of Nebraska's hour-long scrimmage Saturday.
“Saw some good things on both sides, saw some sloppy things,” Pelini said. “About where I thought we'd be right now.”
Pelini said the effort was good, but overall called the level of performance “not good enough to play championship football yet, but that's why we're in camp and that's why we're practicing.
“You want it to be clean and as a coach you want it to be perfect,” he said. “But obviously it wasn't perfect. But you saw some good things on both sides. When you see something good on the offensive side obviously you don't like it on the defensive side, and vice versa.”
Specifically, Pelini said there was some sloppy tackling from the defense. Offensively, he said there were some protection breakdowns, but added that the quarterback play was good and the backs ran hard.
“I think we learned something and we just progress from here,” Pelini said. “We see what we got to get fixed, and we get it fixed.”
Bo: Day off means time to be smart
What's this? A day off?
Nebraska won't practice Sunday after holding nine practices in the first eight days of preseason camp. The Huskers will return with two workouts Monday.
One of the final orders of business Saturday was for Pelini to tell his players to exercise good judgment away from football.
“I just talked to the Unity Council about it and they're going to set the ground rules and the curfew of what we expect,” Pelini said. “This is the time in camp when you have a night off, and you give them a day off tomorrow heading into kind of a long week, that guys got to be smart.
“They've got to protect each other. They've got to understand what's at stake and make good decisions.”
Sirles and Hardrick locked in a battle
One thing about pass protection this season is that it will have to be done with a new starter at left tackle.
Redshirt freshman Jeremiah Sirles and junior-college transfer Jermarcus Hardrick currently are battling for the spot. Mike Smith started at left tackle each of the past two seasons, but was set to be used elsewhere before breaking his leg this week.
Neither Sirles nor Hardrick has played a down of NCAA Division I-A football, but Pelini said he thinks the position “is pretty well-manned right now.”
“Those guys are both getting better,” he said. “They're making progress. But I think you just look at our guys across the board and we're protecting the quarterback pretty well.”
Building some depth at holder
Brett Maher is still the team's No. 1 holder during field goal and extra point situations, but the sophomore may have some competition by the time preseason camp ends.
In an effort to create depth, Nebraska is working junior defensive backs Austin Cassidy and Lance Thorell at the holder spot. Just in case.
“Where I don't want to end up is just having one guy that can hold and if something ever happened to him, not having someone else ready to roll,” said NU assistant John Papuchis, who oversees the special teams. “So Brett gets most of his work done pre-practice.”
Maher, the full-time holder in 2009, is also the team's backup punter.
Sophomore P.J. Mangieri is still the No. 1 long snapper at this point, according to Papuchis.
Commentators like Starling's skills
Nebraska quarterback commit Bubba Starling flashed the potential of a top baseball prospect in Saturday's Under Armour high school All-America baseball game, televised by the MLB Network.
Starling batted third and played center field for the National team, which lost 7-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The 6-foot-5, 200-pounder out of Gardner, Kan., went 0 for 2 with a third-inning walk, but was impressive on the mound.
Starling gave up a lead-off single before striking out the side in his one inning of work.
Starling was caught stealing to end the third, but replays showed he may have been safe.
Starling, a four-star quarterback recruit for the 2011 class, gave his verbal commitment to Nebraska in June. He's expected to be picked early in next summer's MLB draft. Some are predicting he'll go in the first round.
“I think there's a good chance that if he goes high enough in the draft next year, as expected, we might see him sign a baseball contract and maybe he doesn't make it to Nebraska,” Jim Callis, executive editor of Baseball America magazine, said during the MLB Network broadcast.
When asked who was getting the most buzz in terms of the 2011 draft of the players at the game, Starling was the first player Callis mentioned.
Starling topped out at 92 mph on his fastball, according to the MLB Network radar gun, and used a knee-buckling breaking ball for all three of his strikeouts.
ESPN analyst Keith Law recently said Starling's potential is nearly “unlimited” if he were to choose that sport.
— Rich Kaipust and Nick Rubek
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• Video: NU coach Bo Pelini after Saturday's practice:
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