LOGAN — Three of the five largest road crowds Utah State has ever played in front of have been at the University of Nebraska.

In fact, the 78,176 fans at last year's meeting was the largest non-conference attendance figure in Memorial Stadium history. For a time, it was the largest crowd ever until the Nebraska-Texas game a two months later broke it by 92 fans.

The Cornhuskers have sold out 255 consecutive home games dating back to 1962.

The Aggies are expecting another huge crowd when the two teams kick off Saturday at 10:30 a.m. (MDT).

"I think they take a lot of pride in that it's sold out every week," Utah State head coach Mick Dennehy said. "That's they way they can help their football team. Obviously, it has been a help if you look at the number of games they have won over the last 10 years."

The Huskers last non-conference loss at Memorial Stadium — Florida State in 1985. Since 1980, Nebraska has lost just 12 home games, and nine of them were to teams that finished in the Top 6 nationally. The Huskers are 95-5 in the past 15 years and 56-3 in the 1990s.

"It's a great place to play," Dennehy said. "I hope our kids would be extremely excited about that and that we can take a step forward and become close to that good football team that we can be."

Dennehy is convinced Utah State's presence there last year will help out this year.

"I think the fact we have as many kids returning back like we had last year, I don't think it will be that much of a shock," he said.

Dennehy said it's the noisiest place he's played — and Utah State has played at LSU, Georgia, Arizona State and BYU.

"They're a knowledgeable crowd. They want their offense to be able to operate, so they're not going to disrupt the flow," Utah State defensive coordinator Dave Kotulski said. "Will they try to disrupt the flow of our offense? Of course."

This week the Aggies practiced in Romney Stadium and piped in crowd noise to get somewhat of an idea what it could be like.

The Aggies may use a no-huddle offense and hand signals to combat the noise.

"For me, it's just another game," Utah State wide receiver Chris Stallworth said. "I'm used to it now, playing in front of those big crowds," he said. "We should be used to it a bit with the audibles. The Utah crowd was pretty loud. This week will be a whole lot louder."

If won't be just another game for quarterback Travis Cox, who made his first career start last week at Utah.

"(In recruiting) we sold some of these youngster on that if we weren't in a league we were going to have a schedule that any young player would envy and love to be a part of," Dennehy said.

"Guys like Chris Stallworth and Chris Cooley are guys that relish the opportunity to go and play against some of the best people in the country."

The largest crowd Utah State has ever played in front of was in 2001 at LSU with 87,756 in attendance.

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E-mail: jhinton@desnews.com