COLUMBIA, Mo. — Junior I-back Roy Helu said that he and four or five other NU players flew in to Columbia, Mo., on Thursday morning.

Helu said he was sick. To what degree? He didn't know.

But the day was hectic, Helu said. He scrambled to catch up on pregame meetings and last-minute game planning. Plus, he wasn't completely healthy.

But by game time, Helu said, he was ready to go.

“God was good. He saw me through my sickness and gave me great health,” Helu said.

Helu finished with 88 rushing yards on 18 carries.

Anything but special teams

The first half alone served as a clinic in inefficiency for the special teams. The Huskers fumbled three punts by Mizzou senior Jake Harry and struggled to execute a long snap.

Freshman long snapper P.J. Mangieri misfired consistently as he tried to find Alex Henery. It cost Nebraska early in the second quarter as Henery lunged to catch a high snap in the end zone. The punter threw the football out of the end zone for a safety as the Tigers closed in on him.

NU continued to wobble. Niles Paul fumbled a punt. Rex Burkhead fumbled a punt. Another bounced off Mathew May and into the hands of Mizzou linebacker Andrew Gachkar as Paul and Burkhead miscommunicated.

Henery said it was in large part because of the wet weather.

“It just was kind of hard to get a grasp on all the balls,” Henery said. “P.J. was having a tough time snapping the ball. We had one extra point that Brett (Maher) made an amazing hold on.

“We didn't do too bad in warmups. It's just when we got there, he had trouble when his hands were wet and the ball was dry — or when the hands were dry and the ball was wet.”

Asante fights through pain

Senior Larry Asante limped to the bus after the game, fighting through pain that nearly kept him out of Thursday's game.

Asante said he warmed up on the field, but his injured left ankle was hampering his movement. He said he took a shot before the game, which helped.

Asante originally injured that ankle against Louisiana-Lafayette on Sept. 26. He said he needed the entire bye week to recover. Asante recorded six tackles against Missouri on Thursday night.

Penalties rile Pinkel

Missouri had avoided penalty problems through its first four games but was flagged eight times for 100 yards against Nebraska.

“We were the least penalized team in the league coming in here,'' Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said. “Like anything, you're going to have to overcome some good calls and bad calls. It's part of the deal.

“It wasn't the penalties that dictated the outcome of the game. They had a lot of tough penalties for them, too. That's discipline, and I'm responsible for discipline. Going into this game, I thought we were pretty disciplined. Obviously, we didn't do a good job today.''

Nebraska was penalized 12 times for 108 yards.

A lights-out performance

The Missouri state trooper car parked outside the Nebraska locker room had nothing to do with trouble inside.

Well, there was trouble, but only because the lights remained out after the pregame power outage at Faurot Field.

“The cop had his lights going into the locker room, and that really didn't work very well,'' Henery said.

Henery said the kickers gathered two flashlights. Finally, NU personnel found two available flood lights and ran an extension cord to a truck outside.

“It was pretty much like the lighting out here,'' Henery said in the relative darkness outside before the Huskers boarded their bus.

The stadium lights went out at 6:53 p.m. — just a little over an hour before kickoff — because of a campus power outage. The Nebraska and Missouri punters and kickers remained on the field, warming up in the dark, before the lights trickled back on at 7:05 p.m.

— Jon Nyatawa, Mitch Sherman, Steven Pivovar and Rich Kaipust

Niles Paul postgame press conference: