The game within the game at Nebraska on Saturday night featured University of Washington punter Hunter Green going up against the Cornhuskers' counterpart Archie Wilson.

It was a Big Foot convention, no less.

The Huskies' Green launched eight punts for a 48.9-yard average while the hometown Wilson let loose with five boots for a 49.8 rate.

Green had a long of 63 yards; Wilson supplied a 60-yarder for his best punt.

From strictly a stat standpoint, the UW punter would have had the upper hand on overall yardage had he not took a little something off some of his kicks to drop them inside the 20-yard line, plus his return-minded teammates let a couple of Wilson's punts ill-advisedly bounce past them for another 15 to 20 yards on each roll.

Green drew high marks from his coach and that's all that mattered.

"We flipped the field every single time," Jedd Fisch said.

Overall, Green provided punts of 60, 47, 52, 42, 63, 44, 41 and 42 yards at Memorial Stadium in front of a capacity crowd of 86,097 on black-out night.

Factoring in the return yardage, the Cornhuskers began those offensive drives from their 34, 5, 22, 5, 25 (touchback), 15, 17 and 13.

"He kept pinning them back, pinning them back, pinning them back," Fisch said.

Wilson made the Huskies begin on their 3, 12, 15, 36 and 19 with no punt return yardage.

Nebraska's field position follwowing the first punt of the game might have been even better had the 6-foot-4, 235-pound Green not come up and brought down the Cornhuskers' Jacory Barney after the latter got past the first few waves of tacklers.

No two-hand touch or gentle shove here, Green put a full-on tackle on Barney coming up the sideline on a 22-yard return. The Husky special-teamer next jumped to his feet to celebrate the moment if not make sure everyone knew it was a punter sticking his nose in there.

That was just a bonus in Green getting the overall job done. He kept his coach from gambling on fourth down.

"In this conference, you've got to be able to play field-position football," Fisch said. "You've got to be able to not get greedy as a play-caller."

For the season, Green ranks as the nation's sixth-best punter with a 48.1-yard average on 41 attempts, while Nebraska's Wilson sits at No. 21 with a 45-yard average on 31 punts.

There's no ready word on what kind of tackler the Cornhuskers punter is if he is one at all.