The Huskers would have been even higher in the recruiting rankings had four-star wide receiver Desmond Fitzpatrick not changed his mind and his commitment. Louisville got the last visit and Fitzpatrick's signature.

While Riley did not address Fitzpatrick by name Wednesday, he was clearly top of mind when Riley discussed the importance of having other options within close reach if a recruit does back out late.

“What you should do in that case is have that other guy ready to go, and maybe we should have had that other guy ready to go three weeks ago," Riley said. "And we had one in the Dallas area that I think we could have gotten, he ends up at a real good school. But we kind of trusted the situation to be what it looked like, so we didn’t do that."

The prospect from Dallas seemingly is wide receiver Zach Farrar, who ultimately signed with Oklahoma.

There were also a couple of battles closer to home Riley would have liked to have won. NU coaches put a lot of time into athlete Isaiah Simmons (Olathe, Kansas), only to see him pick Clemson.

"We had our chances with a couple more guys and those were, for me, some of the biggest disappointments, right?" Riley said. "Because I'd like to really kind of own this part of it."