LINCOLN — It was clear by Monday that Nebraska linebackers Alfonzo Whaley and Lavonte David had moved into fix-and-repair mode.
The mistakes of Saturday night already had been pointed out and addressed. The mood had shifted to optimism.
No sense dwelling on the past.
“That was the conversation me and Lavonte had — now it's over, now we got our feet wet, now we know what we have to do to get better as a player,” Whaley said. “We try to forget about it because the game last week is nothing you can change. Now we have to work on everything we need to do to fix what we messed up last time.”
Whaley and David said the Husker staff has taken a positive approach with them since the 49-10 win over Western Kentucky. It was the first career Division I-A game for both.
“Hit the film room hard and forget about the past,” David said. “That's the past. We make up for our mistakes. Just do everything better than this. Just get better and better. Just re-focus.”
The complexion of the NU linebacker corps changed dramatically as projected starters Sean Fisher and Will Compton suffered preseason injuries, the latter about 48 hours before the first kickoff.
David and Whaley have gotten the first shots in their absence, although Whaley said the linebackers returned to practice Monday with nobody assured of being No. 1 this week.
“Whoever has the best practices this week are the starters,” Whaley said. “That's how it is.
“I'm not the starter as of right now. Me and Eric Martin are competing for a starting job at the MIKE position, so I have to come in and put a lot of work in and correct what I messed up on Saturday.”
David made a team-high 13 tackles and Whaley added five against Western Kentucky. Intermingled were problems with calls, checks and alignments — not totally unexpected considering their lack of experience at this level.
Whaley said he got a call Sunday from Mike Ekeler, the Huskers' linebackers coach, detailing the problems and what he would need to work on. The sophomore from Madisonville, Texas, came in early Monday to start dissecting film.
“Everything is correctable,” NU head coach Bo Pelini said. “I don't think it's real hard. I thought the communication struggled at times, just making calls and getting lined up. They weren't used to doing that. Already, I saw big improvement in that today.
“It's kind of what I thought it was going to be going in, to be honest with you. So it wasn't a real huge shock to me because of the situation we were put into.”
Whaley was responsible for calls Saturday night when both he and David were on the field, calls that would have been made by Compton if not for the injury. David handled the calls when the Huskers went to their dime package.
“That's my job, so I've got to elevate that in my game,” Whaley said. “Making calls, being vocal, making sure everybody's on the same page ... that's a lot of mistakes that I had and everybody wasn't on the same page with my calls or my checks. So I've got to be loud and vocal with that.”
David, a junior-college transfer from Miami, said his own film review showed some of his positional mistakes.
“Once I saw it, it was real simple,” David said. “I've got to be in that right place. If I was in that right place, I probably would have made a lot more plays.”
Whaley said getting a taste for the game will only help the next time he's out there. It wasn't that things were moving too fast Saturday night, he said, but there was a level of anxiety after he redshirted one season and didn't play in another for NU.
“I can't even explain the feeling,” he said. “I was excited to the point that I couldn't even tell you how I felt.”
Contact the writer:
444-1042, rich.kaipust@owh.com
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