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In case you missed Saturday night's almost continuous ESPN ticker and near constant game highlight that showed Nebraska coming oh-so-close to ending the nation's longest major college basketball winning streak at Kansas, you should know why Doc Sadler isn't buying into any form of moral victory or one shred of respect, regardless of how sincere it might be.

Nope, if you want to know what's up with Doc, you should have listened to his post-game radio show Saturday from Lawrence or Monday's conference call among Big 12 coaches.

Doc doesn't want any kudos for losing to the nation's third-ranked team on the road, even if the unbeaten Jayhawks' 69th consecutive home-court win was in doubt right up to Caleb Walker's missed 3-point shot at the end of a 63-60 Husker loss.

Here are three things you should know before reading the rest of this column:

1) Nebraska believes it has moved beyond back-handed compliments that praise the Huskers' work ethic, even when they lose;

2) They have transitioned from wanting to win and hoping to win and now fully expect to win every time they take the floor; and

3) They welcome every soul that decides to show up and support the Huskers against the stampeding Colorado Buffaloes Tuesday night.

Tipoff is 6 o'clock at the Devaney Center - one hour earlier than usual. The game will be televised on ESPN2, but it's better for the team to purchase your $10 upper-bench seat or $15 chairback seat and print it yourself right here right now. You can also call 1-800-8BIGRED and pick up your tickets at Will Call.

Huskers Eager to Draw a Full House of Their Own

Colorado started 2-0 with back-to-back wins over a pair of top 25 teams - Missouri in Boulder and Kansas State in Manhattan. CU fans then sold out the Coors Events Center last Saturday night, and the Buffs came back from a 12-point deficit in the second half to beat Oklahoma State, 75-71, and move to 3-0.

Tad Boyle, a former Kansas basketball captain and now Colorado's first-year head coach after moving from Northern Colorado, told Denver Columnist Woody Paige how much the rare sellout helped his team. "We want to make college basketball relevant in Boulder and in Denver and the entire state," Boyle said.

Well, guess what? Doc wants to make college basketball relevant in Lincoln and in Omaha and the entire state, too.

"We need a full house Tuesday night," Sadler said. "We need everybody we can get inside the building. Colorado has a tremendous team - one of the best transition teams in the league. They have very, very, very good guards."

Alec Burks (the Big 12's second leading scorer averaging 19.7 ppg) and Cory Higgins (16.6) are all-conference caliber, NBA-type guards that can beat you up-and-down the floor and at the free throw line. Burks blistered Missouri for 36 points and grabbed eight rebounds. Against Okie State, he made 11 of 12 free throws, and Higgins sank 10 of 10.

One of the best free throw shooting teams in the country, the Buffs drained 34 of 39 last Saturday. And we haven't even mentioned that Levi Knutson, who comes off the bench, leads the league with 50.7-percent shooting on three-pointers.

Colorado "may be playing as well as any team in the league right now," Sadler said. The Buffs are playing "with tremendous confidence", are "very talented" and Boyle has "done an unbelievable job coaching them."

Doc: Buffs Have Nation's Best Guard Tandem

"I don't know another team in the country that has two guards as good as Colorado has," Sadler said Monday. "Either one of those guys are capable of hitting you for 30 points in any game and sometimes, maybe hitting you for that (total) in the same game."

We interrupt this column with a news flash. Doc isn't the only one who sees Colorado as a thundering herd of Buffaloes, who are out of the gate so fast that Buff fans are already talking about beating KU next week in Boulder before another crowd that won't need Jayhawk fans to reach sellout status.

If you watched Pitt knock off previously unbeaten Syracuse Monday night, you may have heard ESPN's color analyst go out of his way to point out that "Nebraska and Colorado are two good basketball teams in the Big 12 this year" - two teams capable of going toe-to-toe with any conference rival.

A reporter on Monday's Big 12 conference call asked Doc if he was surprised how good CU is.

"Not at all - not at all," replied Sadler, who went on to explain how the Buffs returned all five starters from a team that not only swept Nebraska, but also pushed KU twice last season.

If you want more evidence, Colorado beat Iowa State, Nebraska and Texas Tech in its last three Big 12 Conference games last year. Combine that with this year's 3-0 start, and the Buffs have won six straight regular-season conference games. If CU can beat Nebraska in Lincoln, it will be the Buffs' longest league winning streak since the 1961-62 and 1962-63 seasons. Plus, they will match last year's 15-win total with 12 regular-season games remaining and a likely post-season.

The good news is Nebraska makes its living slowing down fast teams, and the Huskers relish the opportunity to play a blockbuster game in a young season after falling short twice on the road last week.

CU Game Bigger than MU, KU Games Combined

How big is Tuesday night's showdown between two teams that are playing their final seasons in the Big 12?

"It's bigger than the Missouri and Kansas games combined," Sadler said. "Home games are critical. If you want to have any chance to compete for one of those top two or three positions, you have to win at home."

Sadler sees no reason why the Huskers can't challenge for an upper-division league finish. "We don't want to be known as a team that plays hard and comes up short," Nebraska's head coach told Kent Pavelka Saturday. "We want to be known as a team that plays hard and wins a lot of basketball games, and we still have the opportunity to that."

Pavelka, the most familiar play-by-play voice in Nebraska basketball history, is sold on what these Huskers can do. Minutes after he signed off Saturday at Kansas, he told me: "If you're a basketball fan, you can see this is a good team with a good coach and good players. They hustle and do what they're supposed to do. This is not David and Goliath like it's been so many times in the past. This is a team that's fun to watch and has all the pieces to go into a big fight and win."

Marc Boehm , Nebraska's executive associate athletic director who oversees both Husker basketball programs, is the same kind of believer. In fact, he saw something Saturday in Lawrence that he hasn't seen in seven years.

"In the locker room, I saw every single player on that team with tears in his eyes," Boehm said. "They went to Kansas fully expecting to win, and when they didn't, they were hurt ... deeply hurt. They feel they can play with anyone, and I think people are starting to realize why they feel that way."

Remember Iowa State? Take It Up a Notch!

Nebraska and Colorado have prepared diligently for their final season of Big 12 basketball, and Tuesday's matchup is the Huskers' version of Survivor. They know how important it is to close the gap, while the Buffaloes believe if they can outrun and puncture the nation's second-best field goal percentage defense, they will be at full stampede and sitting pretty at 4-0 overall and 2-0 on the road.

Nebraska rode the energy of a great crowd to a win over Iowa State in its conference opener, but the Huskers need a bigger boost against an even tougher team Tuesday night.

The Huskers go into the game not just wanting to win, but expecting to win, and they need every able body to help stop one stampede and help begin another.

You know your role.

See you at tip-off, and remember, it's an hour earlier than usual.