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As he nears the end of his second season as head coach, Bo Pelini is building a reputation as someone who gets a lot out of a little.

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Last season, Pelini and his staff held together a defense that was relatively light on speed and talent in the back seven and made one major mental bust after another, riding a potent short-passing game led by Joe Ganz, Nate Swift and Todd Peterson to a 9-4 finish.

This year, the offense is woefully unproductive, but Pelini is leaning on his defense and an increasingly solid kicking game to wear out opponents and win by scores like 10-3, 20-10 and on Senior Night in Memorial Stadium, 17-3 over Kansas State to clinch the 2009 Big 12 North crown.

If you have players like Ndamukong Suh, Jared Crick, Larry Asante, Prince Amukamara and Phillip Dillard, it makes sense to put the onus on them to produce.

So far, that strategy is working pretty well.

The Blackshirts have allowed only three touchdowns in their last five games and the Huskers have achieved one of their major season goals.

Nebraska also appears to have achieved stability as a program -- something it needed after suffering two losing seasons in its previous four when Pelini was hired.

Pelini, who is 18-7 at Nebraska, has won more games in nearly two seasons than this Friday's opponent, Dan Hawkins, has won as he closes out his fourth -- and possibly final -- year at Colorado. He has gotten to the Big 12 title game in two seasons, as did Frank Solich, but he inherited a lot less talent than Solich did.

It took Bill Callahan three years to get to the Big 12 championship game, but with Pelini making the decisions, I don't foresee the type of major crash that hit Callahan after his trip to the title game.

Pelini took the Huskers from a last-place tie in the Big 12 North in 2007 to a tie for first in 2008, followed with an outright division title in 2009.

He did it by keeping his team emotionally stable following a demoralizing 9-7 home loss to Iowa State, a game in which Nebraska went minus-eight in turnovers. Since that fiasco, NU has churned out four consecutive victories, including a big win over his friend Bob Stoops and Oklahoma, and kept the Cornhuskers focused in a pair of two-touchdown wins over Kansas and K-State.

Pelini is known for his volatile temper, but he is getting a handle on it and appears determined to develop the same kind of even-keel mindset that characterized Tom Osborne's teams over a quarter-century.

The Huskers had only three penalties Saturday night and went plus-one in turnovers, and in the postgame media conference, he was ready to put this game behind him and focus on the Buffaloes.

Not only has Pelini pulled Nebraska out of the 2002-2007 tailspin in good order, he did it quicker than many predicted he would. He is positioned to get his second nine-win season -- something that Callahan never accomplished -- and his teams are 6-1 in the month of November.

This is the kind of thing that Nebraska fans can get used to.

It looks like another above-average recruiting class is coming together for 2010. As Pelini builds the talent level and depth in this program, he puts it in position to wipe out memories of the Callahan tailspin in short order.

Tad Stryker is the former sports editor of the North Platte Bulletin and provides analysis after each Husker football game for Bulletin readers. Stryker also writes for HuskerPedia (http://www.huskerpedia.com).